In 1897, self-described social planner Charles W. Caryl envisioned a communal model city in western Boulder County and chose the small mountain community of Delphi in Four Mile Canyon. There, he acquired more than 100 gold mining properties and renamed the town “Wall Street” after New York’s financial district.
A Boulder newspaper’s headline at the time read, “Wall Street is Here” and appeared to assure the site a promising future. Its writer explained that Caryl’s New York “syndicate” would build stores, an assay office and a boarding house. Tracks of the Colorado & Northwestern Railroad (soon to be called the Switzerland Trail) already ran through the townsite.
The name of Wall Street (one word today) stuck, but Caryl’s grandiose plans for a utopia turned into an unfulfilled dream. The assay office and even the foundations of its once-prominent mill are easily recognizable today, yet most passersby are unaware of the area’s colorful past…