Mapleton Hill / West Central Boulder

Mapleton Hill is famous for its Halloween lights, its elaborate spooky gardens and haunted porches. It is where kids from all over town come and trick or treat for candy and where parents take sips of spiked cider from the friendly local handing out paper cup fulls. Year around the neighborhood is known for its old huge stone homes and refurbished little estates, but most of all it is known for how crazy expensive it is to buy a home or even maintain property taxes. Mapleton Hill is a dream neighborhood that I reserve for Halloween or for taking the long way home on my bike.

Close to downtown, within a few walking blocks, is Boulder's pedestrian mall Pearl Street and central Boulder. With few renters or students able to afford the neighborhood Mapleton seems far from the University on the opposite vista across the Boulder Creek valley but CU is only a couple miles away. If you walk down the hill toward Pearl you quickly run into dozens of restaurants, street performers, shops and the farmer's market at the banks of Boulder Creek. Those lucky folk who live near Mapleton then carry their locally grown organic food (being green of course) back up to their lovely private patios trekking back up, up the hill. The mountains are literally at the neighborhoods back door, Mapleton Avenue just west of the neighborhood turns into Sunshine canyon, a pretty mountain road that makes its way up toward Gold Hill. This canyon was where the fires of the summer of 2011 threatened to creep into town. I have heard that the neighborhood gets it far share of bears and sometimes even mountain lions because it skirts the mountains and I have seen a lot of deer nibbling in the yards.