Real World Events
MUSEUM STORE SUNDAY
Museum stores have some of the coolest gifts around, and Golden has an amazing number of museums! Please contact the museum store you plan to visit to confirm hours and check on visitation guidelines or restrictions due to COVID-19.
Buffalo Bill’s Pahaska Teepee Gift Shop and Café
987 Lookout Mountain Rd.
303-526-9367
Map
Colorado Railroad Museum Gift Shop
17155 W. 44th Avenue
303-279-4591
Map
Dinosaur Ridge Gift Shop
16831 W. Alameda Pkwy, Morrison
303-697-3466
Map
Foothills Art Center Holiday Art Market
809 15th Street
303-279-3922
Map
Golden History Museum Gift Shop
923 10th St.
303-278-3557
Map
Mines Museum Gift Shop
Colorado School of Mines
1310 Maple Street
303-273-3815
Map
Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum Gift Shop
200 Violet Street, Unit 140
303-277-0377
Map
10AM-3PM Brunch at the Rose @ Buffalo Rose
1PM Freezin’ for a Reason Chili Cook Off and Toy Drive @ Dirty Dogs Road House
Live Music
1-5PM Second Time Around @ Wrigley’s
4-7PM David Henning in the Sky Bar @ The Buffalo Rose
8PM Karaoke Contest at Ace Hi Tavern
Golden History Moment
I always enjoy hearing from readers and discussing the stories I’ve uncovered
I received an interesting note from a reader last week. He pointed out that I have written about a lot of violent events in Golden’s past, including cases where men had been shot to death for stealing things. He thought that repeating such tales dispassionately excused the behavior–that I should specifically state that death is an inequitable price to pay for loss of capital.
He’s right about the inequity–death for theft was an inequitable penalty then, and it would be now. I’ve been assuming that my readers would think so too, and that I didn’t need to say it.
But why do I choose such topics in the first place? First, because I think that avoiding unpleasant historical tales is a form of whitewashing the past. I want to illuminate the past, not eliminate it.
The second reason is that sordid tales were more likely to make it into the paper. There’s an old saying in the newspaper business: “if it bleeds, it leads!” People want to live in a town without crime, but a newspaper without crime is less likely to be read. That may be why the old Transcripts, which seldom mentioned other places, sometimes described crimes in other cities: not having enough crime of our own, we had to import it.
Since I’ve had 150+ years’ worth of Transcripts to choose from, I’ve had my pick of more crimes to write about. Crime still makes a more interesting story than the average PTA meeting.
I’m in full agreement with my reader that criminal acts are bad, as are disproportionate punishments for those acts. This includes the following “Golden History Moment” topics:
1859 – Edgar Vanover is lynched for threatening to kill someone
1860 – Man steals supplies from unattended wagons and is flogged as punishment
1861 – Horse thief is lynched in Apex (approximate site of Heritage Square)
1868 – Police shoot “desperado” Ed Franklin on the site of the Buffalo Rose events center
1879 – Lynch mob removes two accused murderers from county jail and hangs them from a nearby bridge
1882 – A burglar was hiding under the bed of a couple on the north side, so the lady of the house leapt out of bed, grabbed a gun and a hatchet and attacked him. He was overpowered and sent to jail.
1882 – Jailbreak from the county jail
1885 – A series of chicken thefts
1904 – Wife kills abusive husband and is exonerated
1906 – Would-be robber demands a boy’s money, but runs away when the boy yells
1909 – Chicken thefts
1910 – Burglar enters a house in the Goosetown, threatening the young man of the house with a gun. The youth grabs his own gun and fires on the intruder, who runs away.
1910 – Prisoner escapes from the county jail
1911 – Denver woman slits the throat of another Denver woman on South Table Mountain
1916 – Fist fights in the streets when Golden goes dry
1917 – Three Golden youths attempt to rob cars on 44th
1920 – Still found on 11th Street
1920 – Young men robbed at gun point on 12th Street
1922 and 1923 – KKK meetings held on Castle Rock
1922 – Chicken thief is shot
1923 – Chicken thefts
1924 – Chicken thefts
1925 – Bootleggers blow up a barn and start a forest fire during Prohibition
1925 – Armed man approaches a car on 10th Street and tells the driver to stop. The driver accelerates away.
1930 – Gang of chicken thieves hitting many area homes
1943 – Youth murders two young boys by pushing them off Castle Rock
1950 – Two boys are robbed at knife point at 19th and Ford. They lost 5 cents.
1950 – Hardware store robbed, power company employee shot
1950 – Burglars attempt to steal Safeway’s safe
1960 – Kidnapping and murder of Adolph Coors III
1969 – Saboteur uses dynamite to destroy high tension electrical tower on Johnson Road
1975 – Someone bombs the City’s animal control truck
1976 – Robbery, burglary, child endangerment, vandalism, shoplifting (all in the same week)
1980 – House-sitter chases off burglars by hitting them with nun-chucks.
Tune in tomorrow to read about a lynching that the Transcript clearly did believe to be justified.
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!
