Nederland History

Around Nederland: in bookstores now.

Part of Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series, Around Nederland explores the history of Nederland, Colorado, and surrounding towns in photos. The Images of America series celebrates the history of neighborhoods, town, and cities across the country.

From the Longmont Times-Call:

Nederland: A history in pictures

By Quentin Young © 2011 Longmont Times-Call

Mining is central to the early history of Nederland. The town’s very name comes from Mining Company Nederland, a Dutch outfit that, despite its contribution to Nederland’s identity, was not quite successful in its local operations.

The area started as Native American hunting grounds. In 1864, hunter Nathan Brown built a house on Middle Boulder Creek, becoming the first white man to settle there. Soon others arrived in what then was called Brownsville. Five years after Brown’s arrival, prospector Sam Conger found silver nearby, thus beginning the area’s boom-bust cycles of metals mining.

This history is illustrated in more than 200 photographs featured in a book released this month, “Around Nederland,” by Kay Turnbaugh.

Turnbaugh published the Nederland weekly The Mountain-Ear for 27 years until she sold it 2004. She shares much of her extensive knowledge of the town’s history in the book’s chapter introductions and lengthy captions. “Around Nederland” is an illustrated history, but the text Turnbaugh includes gives readers a bedrock understanding of the events and circumstances reflected in the images.

The book is most interesting, in fact, when Turnbaugh supplies details about the people who populated early Nederland and the day-to-day facts of their lives. She includes a picture of resident George Breymaier, for example, and remarks that after his mother died when he was a child, he and his sister were placed in an orphanage “since it was unheard of for a father to raise children on his own.”