125 Years Ago
The January 3, 1900 Colorado Transcript described many recent upgrades to the State Industrial School in South Golden. At that time, there were 143 boys living there. The school had recently added steam heat, allowing them to replace 20 stoves. The new boiler would use only half as much coal are the individual stoves had. The school was now equipped with 62 radiators.
The officers building had been given anew iron roof. New brick sidewalks had been laid and new lawn had been planted around the cottages. The school had grown 40 tons of sugar beets, which were being fed to their 10 milch [milk] cows. The cows provided all of the milk consumed by the boys, and most of the butter.
In national news, the Transcript was unhappy about a proposed change to postal rates, which would allow mail order houses to ship parcels at low rates. The paper called this "A Plan to Annihilate the Small Merchants Throughout the Country.
A brief promotional piece trumpeted "The Crowning Success of Modern Railroading," which was the Union Pacific train that left Denver at 3PM and arrived in Chicago at 8:15PM the following evening. (This was a 29 hour trip, accounting for the time change. The same trip now takes 20 hours).
It was just as well they were advertising, since page 2 of the paper included an article describing "AN AWFUL CRASH" of a Union Pacific train in Brighton. One man had been burned to death and sixteen others were injured, including one man who had lost a leg.
