Small Colorado Town?

[Dreaming of Hawaii]

OP, what you are looking for does not exist. Small towns just do not have middle to upper middle class populations and they cannot sustain themselves.

I suggest looking at some of the subdivisions in Littleton. Littleton has a great historic downtown, good schools, museums, etc. There are a lot of very nice middle to upper middle class neighborhoods. It is a suburb of Denver and the population of the city as a whole is over 40,000, but certainly there are neighborhoods where your kids can "safely play ball in the street".

[SheridanL]

Applewood, Morrison or.....Berkeley.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by SheridanL

Applewood, Morrison or.....Berkeley.

Applewood is a suburban area with no "small town" atmosphere.

[FentonForche]

This smacks of one of those fantasyland postings where the OP, with all due respect, has an overly escapist vision of Colorado brought on by too much time gazing at Thomas Kinkade paintings.

One of the previous posters said it correctly. A ~10,000 person city isn't going to be an exclusively upper class town unless its economy is resort-centric and its real estate market has a huge portion of second homes and investment properties.

Some of these suggestions are head scratchers. Brighton's a cow town. Louisville's a suburb--and if it doesn't completely feel that way now, give it 10 more years.

Idaho Springs kind of fits the profile, but don't go expecting an upper class feel. There are mobile home parks there, as there are in most cities of that size.

Nederland or Lyons might work but they're really small.

Silverthorne/Frisco/Dillon is probably pretty close to what the OP is imagining, particularly Frisco since it's organized along a main street. Maybe Steamboat Springs.

Give Golden a try, it's pretty close to a suburb as well but the population is right and it feels a bit more secluded from Denver metro.

[sesamekid]

Golden is a neat town but very close to Denver... well just a western suburb of it basically. i used to live there and really enjoyed it.

If you want something away from the big city, look at Buena Vista, Sailda or Canon City.

All three are nice picturesque towns with historical downtown areas and wonderful places to raise children. Canon City is probably the most run-down out of the three, but still a quaint small town and safe, safe, safe.