COVID Updates
Everyone 16 OR OLDER is eligible to get the vaccine.
Appointments to Get the COVID Vaccine
State of Colorado’s Find Out Where You Can Get Vaccinated page | Lutheran Medical Center | JCPH Clinic in Arvada (70+ only) | www.vaccinespotter.org/CO/
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
More Public Health References
School of Mines COVID-19 case page. | Sign up for exposure notifications | CDC | Colorado | Jefferson County | City of Golden
Virtual Events
Opening Weekend: Zen and the Art of Profit – from Miners Alley
Online Worship:
Calvary Episcopal Church | Faith Lutheran Church | First United Methodist Church | First Presbyterian Church | Flatirons Community Church | Golden Church of Christ | Golden Presbyterian Church | Hillside Community Church | Jefferson Unitarian Church | Rockland Community Church | St. Joseph Catholic Church
2PM Sunday at the Quilt Museum
Meet the Artists of Viewpoints 9 is an international, invitational, fiber art group, founded in 2012. Each artist chose one word as a theme, with nine quilts created around each theme, totaling 81 pieces. Click here for Zoom link
Real Life Events
11AM-2PM Brunch at the Rose
1PM Wild West Walking Tour
Live Music:
12PM Wild Mountain Honey Band at Golden Mill
7PM Spinphony Electric String Quartet @ Buffalo Rose
Golden History Moment
You probably recognize this intersection, but unless you live in Pleasant View, you may never have turned left and driven on Mt. Vernon Road. Until a few years ago, there was a stop light at this intersection. Have you ever wondered why it’s such a wide, major-looking road? Paul Haseman explains the pioneer-era origins of the road in today’s Golden History Moment.
♫ Mt. Vernon, Mt. Vernon, We sing to thee! ♫
I graduated from Mt. Vernon HS about three miles from the George Washington’s renowned home in Virginia. Mt. Vernon found its way west as the name of the former small 1859 village of Mt. Vernon at the base of Mt. Vernon Canyon (I-70) at Golden’s south end. The town of Mt. Vernon is now Jeffco’s Matthews-Winters Park on the south side of the freeway.
Before there was I-70 and U.S. 40, the 1859 Mt. Vernon toll road ran up the same canyon to the gold fields. The route to the toll road came through Golden on the 1859 St. Vrain (Longmont) Golden City & Colorado Wagon Road to Mt. Vernon and beyond. One purpose of the road was to route gold seekers through Golden and bypass Denver.
When Colorado Territory was officialized in 1861 the former “Provisional Territory” governor, Robert Steele left his residency in Mt. Vernon and moved a mile north to the hamlet of Baden, which he renamed Apex. Steele also built a competitive toll road up Apex Canyon authorized by an act of the new Territorial Legislature. A sign on the now Apex Trail still lists the toll fees. The authorizing Act included the specified toll route:
The line of said road shall extend from the junction on the Golden City and Denver Road at what is known as the Cold Spring Ranch, owned by Mr. Fields, being about ten miles from Denver City; thence up the valley to the mouth of [Apex] Amos Gulch: thence up said gulch to the summit of the mountain.
That road became the Mt. Vernon Rd and exists today in Golden from Ulysses Road to South Golden Road in Pleasant View.
But there’s more to Mt. Vernon Road. Cold Spring Ranch was an early Colorado ranch formed in 1860 on 320 acres near the crossroads of the Denver-Golden Road and Mt. Vernon Road. The now Rock Rest Restaurant is on one corner and Walt’s Tire Service on the other. By 1861 George Pullman, Spafford Fields (“Mr. Fields”) and other associates had acquired and expanded the ranch to 1600 acres bounded on the east by what is now Indiana Street, on the west by Ulysses Street, and on the north by South Table Mountain. A part of the former ranch is now the southern portion of Camp George West. Pullman built the “Pullman House” at this intersection as it was a “halfway” station for gold hunters headed for the mountains via Mt. Vernon Road.
In 1866, Pullman sold the property and with his other Colorado earnings took $40,000 to Chicago to begin building Pullman Sleeper railroad cars, the design for which he perfected at Pullman House on Mt. Vernon Road.
♫ Mt. Vernon, Mt. Vernon, We sing to thee! ♫
♫ Mt. Vernon, Mt. Vernon, We sing to thee! ♫
Thanks to Paul Haseman for the research and write-up!
