Real World Events
10AM-3PM Brunch at the Rose @ Buffalo Rose
10AM-3PM Saturday Train Rides @ Colorado Railroad Museum
10AM-2PM Girl Scout Day @ Colorado Railroad Museum
10AM-12PM Wild West Walking Tour @ Golden Visitors Center
10AM Easter Egg Hunt @ Parfet Park
Many thanks to the Kiwanis Club and the Boy Scouts for hosting this event!
10:15AM Family Time @ Golden Library
12-2:30PM Walk With a Geologist @ Dinosaur Ridge
3PM Crawfish Boil @ The Golden Mill
1-4PM Wild West Pub Crawl @ Golden City Brewery
6:30-7:30PM Soundbath @ Pranatonic
7-9:30PM Golden Ghosts & Spirits Tour @ Goosetown Station
7:30PM Blue Ridge @ Miners Alley Playhouse
FULL MOON TONIGHT
Live Music
11AM-2PM Grey Rails Duo @ Buffalo Rose (Sky Bar Stage)
3-6PM Robby Peoples @ Golden Mill
5-8PM Yepok @ Goosetown Station
5PM Seeing Stars Band @ Over Yonder
7-10PM Will Whalen @ Buffalo Rose (Sky Bar Stage)
8PM Petty Nicks Experience – A Tribute to Tom Petty & Stevie Nicks @ Buffalo Rose (main venue)
9PM Karaoke @ Ace Hi Tavern
Golden History Moment
The Bella Vista hotel was built in the early 1880s at 12th and Jackson Streets. In 1920, a salvage company dismantled it, selling off the woodwork, flooring, doors and windows, the pipes–even the bricks. What they couldn’t sell, they left behind. There, the pile of wreckage remained for 16 years.
86 Years Ago
The April 16, 1936 Colorado Transcript included an article titled “RATS!”
The cleaning up of the old foundations of the Belle Vista hotel preparatory to constructing the new PWA consolidated grade school building has disturbed the homes of innumerable rats and will undoubtedly scatter them out pretty well over Golden. Arrangements should be made at once to exterminate these destructive rodents.
The Transcript frequently wrote about rats, sometimes offering helpful hints about how to kill them–poison, shooting, and asphyxiation by car exhaust being among the suggestions.
Why did we have such a rat problem? It’s probably because we did not have a good method of disposing of our waste. Over the years, Golden’s town dumps were in surprisingly central places, including Parfet Park, 11th Street next to the Creek, and the west end of 8th Street. Theoretically, those dumps were intended for non-smelly things, such as construction waste or unwanted furniture, but people often dumped food waste, dead animals, and other rat attractants. Apparently, from 1920-1936, many of those rats called the Bella Vista waste pile home.
Golden offered curbside garbage collection beginning in the 1950’s, and made it mandatory in 1967. References to rats in the local paper dropped off sharply after that.
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!
