Saco Rienk DeBoer

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Saco Rienk DeBoer (born September 7, 1883, Ureterp, Netherlands; died August 1974, Denver, Colorado), was a landscape architect and civic planner. He was the official Landscape Architect of Denver from 1910 to 1931. He also designed the planned community of Boulder City, Nevada.

Few people had a more direct impact on the contours of Denver, Colorado than Saco DeBoer. As a landscape architect, he designed dozens of city parks and hundreds of private gardens. As a city planner, he co-authored Denver's first zoning code, devised many of its roadways, and led in the development of mountain parks. He was instrumental in the creation of such signature sites as Denver Botanic Gardens and Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

DeBoer's work extended well beyond Denver. He consulted for cities along the Front Range – including Greeley, Grand Junction, Boulder, Golden, Longmont, Aurora, Fort Collins, and Englewood – and far beyond, including Scottsbluff, Nebraska; Brainerd, Minnesota; Ruidoso, New Mexico; Idaho Falls, Idaho; Boulder City, Nevada; and Glendive, Montana. He even worked with National Resources Planning on more comprehensive planning, spending more than a decade devising programs for the states of Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

More globally, DeBoer articulated the content and design of the Rocky Mountain urban landscape, with a legacy revealed not only in the fabric of cities or the design of parks, but also in the hundreds of publications on everything from aesthetic design to soil characteristics in the transmontane West. As one memorial put it, "probably no other person has done as much to make this region a green oasis."

Upon awarding him with the Civis Princeps award in 1972, Regis College noted that "many a good and generous man aspires to put a personal mark on his own city. Few have done so as indelibly – though as unobtrusively – as Saco Rienk DeBoer." More than a talented designer and a practiced aesthete, they asserted that "his was a 'voice before its time,' not only in ecological awareness, but in his concern over the 'modern' tendency towards dehumanization."

Over his lifetime, he was recognized in many ways: as a Fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects; as a member of the Colorado State Planning Board, the American Institute of Planners, and the Netherlands Institute for City Planning and Housing. He received an Award of Merit from the Colorado Forestry and Horticulture Association, life membership in the Colorado Society of Engineers, and honorary membership in both the American Institute of Architects and American Society of Planning Officials. He was honored with a Distinguished Service Award from the American Institute of City Planning in 1960, an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Colorado Nurserymen's Association in 1961, a Distinguished Service Award from Americans by Choice in 1966.

But perhaps his greatest tribute was in the city itself, and the lands that he tended both personally and professionally. His 1972 memoir ended with an eye towards both his legacy and the future:

"We must not stop in our planning for beauty. Our trees and parks and gardens must be renewed constantly if we are to leave a decent world for those who follow us. Now is the time to plan that world. The city grows so fast that it will soon be too late if the opportunities for making it beautiful are not grasped now."