A Woman With a Lovely Name and a Lovely House

*Golden Eye Candy – Patrick Klein – DeLong Park, nearing completion – click to enlarge*

Virtual Events

6-6:55AM Virtual Dynamic Circuit
8:30-9:30AM Virtual Power Training
4PM Kids Martial Arts Class
10:15AM Spanish Story Time with the Library

Real World Events

4-5PM 3D Printing @ Golden Library – WAITLISTED
5-9PM Golden Game Guild Meet-Up Mondays @ Golden Game Guild

Golden History Moment

*Colorado Transcript – April 4, 1957 – click to enlarge*

76 Years Ago
We are going to have our Thanksgiving Day Dinner with an octogenarian. This will be Lake Smith’s 83rd Thanksgiving day–that’s almost half of all the Thanksgiving days since the United States of American became a nation in 1776.
The Colorado Transcript – November 22, 1945

Lake Erie Smith came to Golden to visit an aunt in 1870, and returned the following year to marry W.G. Smith–son of the Presbyterian minister, editor of the Golden Globe, and former lieutenant governor of Colorado. The couple had 3 daughters and a son, and by the time she died in 1957 she also had 9 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren.

*Colorado Transcript – January 9, 1958 – click to enlarge*

Mrs. Smith lived in only two houses in her lifetime–the one in Iowa, where she was born, and the one she shared with her husband at 13th and Arapahoe. The Golden house began as a modest bungalow, but the couple added on as they added children and over time it became quite large and stately. Mrs. Smith enjoyed young people, and after her husband’s death in 1921 she rented rooms to Mines students. She was quite involved in the Presbyterian church, and hosted many church socials in her yard, in the shade of the trees that she and her husband had planted decades before.

*Lake Erie Smith house – excerpt from a photo belonging to the Denver Public Library Western History collection – click to enlarge*

Beautiful as the house was, the land beneath it was even more valuable. Shortly after Lake’s death, the City cut down the trees next to the house. They needed to widen Arapahoe Street to add diagonal parking. The following year, Mr. Foss bought the house so he could make a parking lot for Foss Drug customers. Even today, the north half of that parking lot belongs to the city, but the south half still belongs to the Foss family.

Thanks to the Golden History Museum for providing the online cache of historic Transcripts, and to the Golden Transcript for documenting our history since 1866!