from the Turnpike Land Company

This film is about the planning and building of Broomfield Heights. It was probably made around 1956. For many families Broomfiewld Heights was and still is the perfect place to live.

This review was with the film;

Subject: Product of a Planned Community

This was amazing to see and to find. I was raised in Broomfield. I was 5 years old when my family moved there and started attending Kohl Elementary School and later attended Nativity School.

Now looking back I see that I am a product of a planned community. The documentary brought back early memories and I must say that growing up in Broomfield at that time was a special experience. Front doors unlocked, parks to play in, the city within the highways was open and safe. The ideals that were expressed in the documentary are some of the best things that I carry with me now.

I have now moved around the world a lot, seen many things, filled my head with ideas and information that was only available at the time from Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library, right next to the Dentist Office and the Broomfield Star Builder Newspaper office.

It was a town where we had 'The Bank', 'The Grocery Store', 'The Drug Store'. The city fathers put gas stations at the entrance to the town so we could get our car filled coming and going.

Mostly it was a place to grow a family and as our large family grew we had a safe place to go all over town. The bowling alley was considered dangerous. They had pinball machines.

My parents are still in the house that I grew up in and looking at this documentary I see them searching for a place to raise a family choosing Broomfield and moving us there. I see my mother and father in these images, with the clothes of the era, and the hope and ideals that were from a time that Eisenhower passed the Presidency to Kennedy, and a torch was passed to that generation.

Looking at this did not make me want to return to the past. That is never possible. It was also a past where in first grade the whole town had regular drills with air raid alarms that 'warned us' of a nuclear attack and we were instructed to duck under our desks at Kohl School and cover ourselves from broken glass. Of course, our skin would have melted, but we were prepared.

No, we can't return to the past. I am cautious about the idea. That was then.

Now we can plan our own communities in whatever manner we are able to arrange them. Hopefully with tolerance and open hearts.

This documentary makes me appreciate the gift that I had to be raised with an ideal albeit naive that I can carry with me now.