Golden Eye Candy – Jen Rutter – Sunrise Over Coors – click to enlarge

Virtual Events

8-9AM Hybrid Golden Merchants Meeting @ Golden Visitors Center
9-9:55AM Silver Sneakers Classic
10:15AM Virtual:  Toddler Time with the Library
2:30PM Local Licensing Authority Meeting @ City Hall

Real World Events

8-9AM Hybrid Golden Merchants Meeting @ Golden Visitors Center
9-10AM Women’s Exercise and Bible Study
10-11AM Story and Craft Time @ Colorado Railroad Museum
10:15AM Baby Time @ Golden Library
2:30PM Local Licensing Authority Meeting @ City Hall

6:30PM City Council Study Session @ City Hall
City Council will hear a status report regarding the City’s Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Action Plan. They plan to go through a community engagement process, making special effort to reach communities of color, people with handicaps, and lower-income populations, including those experiencing homelessness. By March of 2022, they will publish a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan, and by April of 2022, they will publish a Racial Equity Plan. more…

They will discuss a proposed “Healthy Kids’ Meals” ordinance, which would require that bundled kids meals offer only water, unflavored milk, or sparkling water. more…

They will discuss the organization and funding of our Fire Department. The City recently commissioned a study to determine whether the Fairmount, Golden, and Pleasant View Fire Departments should combine. The departments already cooperate, and the participants feel the combined departments would provide better service. more…

Interest in Fire Department staffing was greatly increased when Council received a letter from CJ Fey, a Golden resident and Division Chief with the West Metro Fire Protection District. Chief Fey wrote that “…the performance of the Golden Fire Department remains dangerously substandard and continues to fall well below national standards.”

It seems the Golden Fire Department may be seriously under-staffed: it protects not only the residents and structures of Golden but the County buildings, the School of Mines campus, and Clear Creek Canyon (with its traffic, rock-climber, and tubing accidents). All of these extra coverage areas place a significant staffing demand on our Fire Department, and also require specialized equipment. As I understand it, neither the County nor the State contribute to the cost of running our Fire Department.

Council will consider this problem this evening, and may need to look for funds to staff the department at reasonable, safe levels.

The final topic of the night will be the 2022 budget. The City Manager hopes to hire 7.5 new employees, with the following titles: Right-of-Way Inspector, Fiber Administrator, Associate Planner, Housing Policy Coordinator, Co-Responder for Police, Social Media & Marketing Coordinator, Homeless Navigator, Part Time Economic Development Assistant. more…

Projected 2022 Budget
Revenues $32,604,229
Expenses $34,490,987

You might find the comparison to the 2012 budget interesting:

2012 Actual
Revenues $24,439,948
Expenses $23,578,682

Weekly COVID Update

News Flash: The 2020 census data is out, and Jefferson County has grown a bit (from 583,082 to 586,579). That means that the % of our population that’s vaccinated goes down a little–same number of people vaccinated, but now that number is a slightly smaller percentage of the total population. That’s why the number has slipped from 80.2% last week to 79.7% this week. Learn more….

79.7%

% of Jeffco residents (12+) who have received at least one shot (-0.5% since last week)
75.3% are fully-vaccinated (-0.3% since last week) – source

Jefferson County Case Summary:
Cases in Jeffco – Oct 11th: 60,102 | Oct 18th: 61,347 (+1245)
Deaths in Jeffco – Oct 11th: 946 | Oct 18th: 958 (+12)
Currently Hospitalized in Jeffco – Oct 11th: 49 | Oct 18th: 60 (+11)
Recovered – Oct 11th: 57,393 | Oct 18th: 58,546 (+1153)
Known Cases in Golden – Oct 11th: 2344 | Oct 18th: 2393 (+49)

COVID Vaccine Appointments
State of Colorado: Where You Can Get Vaccinated
Jeffco Public Health Vaccine Call Center: 303-239-7000
State Vaccine Hotline: 1-877-268-2926.

Golden Testing Sites
Mines COVID Testing | Jeffco Fairgrounds COVID Testing

More Public Health References
Sign up for exposure notifications | CDC | Colorado | Jefferson County | City of Golden

Where to get vaccinated
The Pfizer COVID vaccine now has FULL FDA APPROVAL. Safeway (map) is accepting walk-ins to administer these free vaccines. Walgreens (map) takes walk-ins from 9:30AM to 1PM and 2-8PM Monday – Friday. Appointments are not necessary, but they are available.

Golden History Moment

We know a lot about Golden’s Founding Fathers. Our Founding Mothers are harder to study. They seldom appeared in photos, and their activities were mentioned less in the Transcript. For about 45 years, we had streets named after some of our early female settlers, but those names were changed in 1904.

Fortunately, Paul Haseman and Rick Gardner have done some good work in tracking down these early, stalwart women. Here’s a piece that they compiled about Mary Boyd.

Mary Boyd was born in Newcastle, PA, in 1815, where at Beaver County on 19 October 1837 she married Theodore Boyd. They had six children while they lived at Newcastle: Jim, Mary, Maggie, Eliza, Joseph, and Edward. They came to Golden in June 1859 with the Boston Company and built Golden’s first private residence, a rough-hewn pine log cabin, at what would now be across 11th and Washington.

Later in June, Mary, a devoted Christian woman, attended Golden’s first church service in the Ford Brothers saloon tent, where she and other town ladies, sitting atop whiskey and nail kegs, led the singing of the first hymn in Golden. After a few lines, the motley crew of tough miners, teamsters, gamblers, and plainsmen joined in accompanied by a couple of miners playing a violin and flute.

Late in 1859, the Boyds and their oldest son, Jim, began farming where the North Golden Rd (West 44th Ave), crosses Clear Creek just west of Wadsworth, building the bridge that would be known for many years as Boyd’s Crossing. There they were among the Clear Creek pioneer farmers, among whose crops would be wheat, in the place that would soon become known as Wheat Ridge. They moved their home to the farm, and in its place in Golden built a larger building, which they ran for a few years as the Golden City House hotel.

When the Mountain Fever epidemic hit the mining camps in 1860 Mary and other Golden women joined together to form the Ladies’ Samaritan Society, Golden’s first health organization, “for the purpose of alleviating the sufferings of strangers who may be sick among us.” Mary served as President of the Society, and many of the women had already been caring for the sick who had come down from the mines. For some it was too late but many others survived with the help of Mary and the other women.

In 1860, the Boyds built another hotel at Boyd’s Crossing, which Mary, Theodore and their children ran for traveling patrons. However, Mary remained committed to Golden’s life, as she continued as a founding member of Calvary Church in 1867. At Calvary she helped organize another ladies’ society, the Mite Society, which raised funds to give Calvary its first organ. “The organ’s . . . inspiring tones will ever be reminders to the congregation of the generosity and public spirit of the ladies of our town.” (Transcript 19 Feb 1868)

Whether founding a church or caring for others, Mary and other early Golden women were the real foundation for Golden. Referring back to the earliest days of Golden, George West wrote. “From that time on the influence of those sweet ladies for good in our camp was far-reaching and undeniable, making one of the most orderly of all the camps in this whole mountain region.” (Transcript 25 June 1903)

Dying on 22 July 1871, not long after her husband (1865), Mary rests in the Golden Cemetery. Her son-in-law George West, who had married daughter, Eliza, wrote in the Transcript “In the death of this inestimable lady a large and loving family mourns the loss of the best of mothers, the church of which she was a member one of its strongest and consistent pillars, and the community one who was ever foremost in every good work of Christian duty. She has gone ‘over the river,’ but still lives by her Godly example in the hearts of all who knew her.” (Transcript, 26 July 1871)

Golden thanks you, Mary.

Thanks to Richard Gardner and Paul Haseman for providing this article, to the Golden History Museum for providing the online cache of historic Transcripts, and to the Golden Transcript for documenting our history since 1866!