Good Citizens
The biggest event of the year in Boulder City is the Annual Art in the Park held downtown below the graceful trees of Wilbur Square and Bicentenial Park on the weekend of October 1st and 2nd. Somewhere upwards of 120,000 people attend the event, which is a benefit for the Boulder City Hospital. It can be a magical affair of art, crafts, the beginning of fall, and more importantly the end of the hot summer in what present residents call “clean, green Boulder City.” When everything aligns, it is the perfect Indian summer event. Don’t miss it.
But this has not always been so. Talking to kids who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, Boulder City sucked, and they couldn’t wait to leave. The city was in danger of losing it’s hospital. The Bureau of Reclamation was gifting the hospital located on Park Street. The Pink Ladies of the Hospital needed to raise some money, and Sara Denton had a home next to the Park suitable for entertaining with a nice view of the lake. Now Sara is much to modest to claim credit for the idea of selling art in the park, but only says that she was “instrumental” in getting Art in the Park going. In those early days the art was hung on a clothesline, and the really good stuff was hung inside in Sara’s living room.
Sara did have other interests in this little city, with growing kids to nurture and a little town to polish. She had many co-conspirotors in the form of her husband, Ralph Denton, who was a famous civil rights lawyer, Gene Segerblom, famed State Assemblywoman, and her husband, the photographer and artist Cliff Segerblom. I can imagine these co-conspirators sitting on a bench overlooking the park, the men reading the local paper and commenting on the news of the day and the ladies coming up with another idea to make this little town home. Good citizens, I call them. The people who care about a place and make it great. Their legacy is Art in the Park. Something not to miss.
—Alan Goya
