joder arabian ranch – Boulder County Horse Association

BCHA Gallops Towards 50: 2010 to the Present

archives, Archives-BCHA history / March 8, 2021

A couple of weeks ago I put the last of the physical archives back in storage. Without tangible clippings, photos and newsletters in my hands I feel my grip on the magic of the past loosening—and perhaps that’s fitting. I turn now to the digital landscape and our amazing boulderhorse.org website. I have to dig a little, but thanks to the vision and technical know-how of recent leaders, I can travel back in time online all the way to 2010. I pick up the thread of history there, and begin to weave together the most recent decade and the years leading up to our pivotal moment in time as we gallop into our 50th year! Floods, Fires, VS, and a Pandemic—Really? The Floods How could any of us forget September 2013. Between September 11–15 more than 18 inches of rain fell in Boulder County and the neighboring front range areas. The historic flooding along Boulder’s 15 drainages, earned its designation as a Federal Disaster Area. In all, 17 counties were affected in Colorado requiring the biggest airlift rescue operation since Hurricane Katrina. Boulder County horse owners had to cope with extremely scary weather conditions, on top of concerns about the health and wellness of their equines and the land they lived on. Foothills communities were cut off and experienced extensive damage. Emergency evacuations were ongoing over the course of several days. Sitting above the floods at an elevation of 9,000 feet, the hilltop pasture at Broken Arrow Ranch provided an impromptu helicopter landing area for crews performing […]

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The 1980s: Article No. 4 — BCHA Gallops Towards 50

By Clare Tone Clare is a Boulder County Horse Association (BCHA) committee member and freelance writer living in western Boulder County. In this monthly column leading up to our 50th Anniversary she explores the rich history of BCHA. What does the 1980s conjure up for you—big hair, neon clothing, high-waisted jeans? For me, because I was in school throughout the 1980s, it represents the transition from analog to digital. The 1980s were a decade of acceleration, but nowhere near the pace of how things zip along today with smartphones and ubiquitous internet connections. In some odd, quirky, time-warp way the culture of the 1980s seems the mirror opposite of our culture today during this pandemic time. While the 1980s marked a kind of technical acceleration, here we are right now forced to slow down. Perhaps a slowing down that could bring us into contact with some of the better qualities of the 1980s. As a high school student in the early 1980s my assignments were typed on an old relic of a typewriter. By senior year things were clipping along a little better on an electric typewriter with an automatic erasure key! By college I was bogged down trying to learn MS DOS on the very first publicly available personal computers. Yes, computers were invented by then, but they were so much less efficient than the modes of communication I knew. Supposedly there was some form of e-mail, but most of us kids of the 80s still plugged along slowly to communicate. I wrote longhand letters