I spent yesterday time-traveling through Golden’s past. The Golden History Museum recently posted another batch of historic Transcript newspapers, and I got completely sucked-in…spent about 10 hours reading about life in Golden in the mid-20th Century. I started with the very last online issue, which was October 21, 1965, and went backward from there. I read about the demolition of a lot of pioneer-era buildings, including the South School (1873-1965), the Baptist Church (1866-1961), the Methodist Church (1868-1963), and the County Courthouse (1878-1963).
When I’d had enough of “modernizing,” I skipped back to early 1949, so I could see what was happening 70 years ago. That was an exciting time in Golden. The Depression and World War II were over, and Golden was suddenly overrun with young families, as returning soldiers took advantage of the GI Bill to attend the School of Mines. With the population surge came many more automobiles, so the City asked the Tramway company to stop running interurban cars down the middle of Washington Avenue.
In January, the new president of the Chamber of Commerce announced his ambition to build a Welcome Arch over Washington Avenue. The letters were to be outlined in neon. 700 Golden school children had their teeth treated with fluoride. The City proposed that dogs be vaccinated and licensed for the first time. They also wanted dogs to be confined to yards or tied up, but there was too much citizen resistance to that idea, so dogs continued to run free.
We had chronic water shortages, because our reservoir and our supply pipes were frozen. The City was being threatened with a lawsuit, because we were still dumping our raw sewage straight into Clear Creek
Golden Furniture received the first shipment of refrigerators ever seen in Jefferson County. Council rolled out our very first zoning ordinance and map. The Golden Theater (the building at 13th & Washington that now houses Starbucks) had been closed for several months for a major remodeling, and announced their Grand Opening for March 24th. The new neon-lit Welcome Arch and the remodeled movie theater opened on the same night, and 6000 people celebrated on Washington Avenue. The Transcript’s headline read “GOLDEN – Fastest Growing Little City in State.”
The Golden Transcript (originally called the Colorado Transcript) has been publishing since 1866. The Golden History Museum has been working on digitizing the old issues, and they’re currently up to June of 1948. They expect to post digitized issues up through 1961 early next year. You’ll find old Transcripts online at coloradohistoricnewspapers.org. You can contribute to the cost of the digitizing project with a donation to the Golden History Museum.
If you’re looking for things to do in Golden today, check the calendar on the homepage!
