Continued Progress on Vaccines, Drought, Work Plans, and the WPA Quarries

*Golden Eye Candy – Karen Oxman – Glamorous Cape – click to enlarge*

COVID Updates

22.6% — *% of Jeffco residents (16+) who have received either one or both shots – source*

STARTING THIS FRIDAY, MARCH 5TH, Coloradans age 60 to 64, people with two or more chronic health conditions and grocery store and agricultural processing workers will be eligible for vaccinations.

Appointments to Get the COVID Vaccine (Eligibility)
State of Colorado’s Find Out Where You Can Get Vaccinated page | Lutheran Medical Center | JCPH Clinic in Arvada (70+ only)

Jefferson County Public Health’s COVID-19 Vaccine Call Center 303-239-7000

State Hotline to answer questions, including location of vaccine providers: 1-877-268-2926. It is staffed 24 hours a day.

Golden Testing Sites
Mines COVID Testing | Jeffco Fairgrounds COVID Testing

*Visit the Jeffco Public Health website for information about Level Blue*

Jefferson County Case Summary:
Cases in Jeffco – Fri: 37,130 | Mon: 37,348 (+218)
Deaths in Jeffco – Fri: 755 | Mon: 759 (+4)
Currently Hospitalized in Jeffco – Fri: 36| Mon: 42 (+6)
Known Cases in Golden – Thurs: 1500 | Mon: 1511 (+11)
Recovered – Fri: 35,442 | Mon: 35,675 (+233)

Virtual Events

10:15AM Toddler Time with the Library
6-7PM Recursos Digitales
6-7PM COVID-19 Vaccine Q& A
6-7:30PM Let’s Talk – Historical Fiction

6:30PM City Council Regular Business Meeting
City Council will have a brief business meeting tonight. They will read two proclamations–one for National Read Across America Day, and one for International Women’s Day. The City Manager will provide an update on the City’s response to COVID.

This will be followed by a study session. The Deputy Public Works Director will update council on drought conditions. After that, they will meet briefly with the chairs of each of the boards and commissions to review the 2021 Work Plan for each.

Sustainability
Economic Development
Historic Preservation
Mobility and Transportation
Parks Recreation and Museums
Planning
Public Arts
Downtown Development
Golden Urban Renewal Authority
Investment Advisory Committee
Volunteer Firefighter Pension Board

Golden History Moment

*1937 Tent City transient camp at Camp George West where quarry workers lived, from Golden History Museum. – click to enlarge*

South Table Mountain, the WPA, and Camp George West
by Guest Historian Donna Anderson

The year was 1933: unemployment in Colorado was about 25%. In May 1933, the U.S. Government started the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). FERA matched 1 dollar of federal funds with 3 dollars of state and local money to set up projects to employ men. Colorado was in the first group of 7 states to receive FERA aid, and as such was a magnet for the unemployed. Camp George West operated a transient camp beginning August 1934 housing 200 to 500 homeless men, all in need of work. Camp workers repaired and renovated buildings on the post, and constructed the pillar fence along South Golden Road and an amphitheater* on the south side of South Table Mountain. Employing 350 men at startup, four basalt quarries on the east side of South Table Mountain provided building material.

*Location of the WPA Quarries – click to enlarge*

In 1935 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) replaced FERA. Some FERA projects were transferred, including the large basalt quarry operations on South Table Mountain. Basalt quarry-stone was used to construct new buildings at Camp George West, as well as for rip-rap to line the Cherry Creek and South Platte River channel-banks in Denver. By 1936, the City and County of Denver Improvements and Parks Department became a key customer of quarried basalt, because the crushed stone made excellent road mix (aka paving material). By 1937, 200 trucks a day hauled crushed basalt from South Table Mountain to various projects across the Denver area. One of the nearby WPA projects was construction of Alameda Parkway across Dinosaur Ridge to Red Rocks Park In 1937. Crushed basalt from South Table Mountain was used to pave the new road. Today, an historic marker and a basalt boulder stand as testimony to that effort at the southeast corner of County Road 93 (aka Hogback Road) and Alameda Parkway on the west side of Dinosaur Ridge.

*Drill-hole patterns from 1960s rock testing in Quarry 2 on South Table Mountain. – click to enlarge*

In 1938, the City and County of Denver took over quarry operations, which mostly ended in World War II. However, in 1948-49 the quarries supplied rip-rap for Cherry Creek Dam. Quarry 4 became a Gun Club in the 1950s. In the 1960s, quarries 1 and 2 served as a rock-mechanics test-site operated by the Gardner-Denver Company, leaving behind myriads of hole patterns in the quarry faces. Today, the former WPA quarries are mostly in private ownership adjacent to Jefferson County Open Space and State Lands.

*The amphitheater was so popular with rattlesnakes that it never made it as a human venue.

Sources:
Butler, W. B., 1992, Archeological survey of Camp George West and the Works Progress Administration, South Table Mountain Basalt Quarries, Jefferson County, Colorado.
National Park Service Register of Historic Places, Camp George West Historic District
ESRI-Online world imagery for the basemap.

Guest Columnist Donna Anderson and Paul Haseman are writing a book called “Golden Rocks!” about the geology and mining history of Golden, to be completed sometime this year (delayed due to COVID!)