COVID Updates
FREE VACCINE CLINIC THIS WEEKEND
Friday, April 16, and Saturday, April 17, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park (Lot H), 6000 Victory Way, Commerce City, CO 80022 (off of Quebec on 60th Ave). REGISTER here. For more INFORMATION on the vaccine, visit here.
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
As of last Monday (April 5th), Jeffco Health moved to relax mask standards. Learn more….
Jefferson County Case Summary:
Cases in Jeffco – Tues: 42,226 | Weds: 42,413 (+187)
Deaths in Jeffco – Tues: 785 | Weds: 785 (unchanged)
Currently Hospitalized in Jeffco – Tues: 31 | Weds: 36 (+5)
Recovered – Tues: 39,976 | Weds: 40,114 (+138)
Known Cases in Golden – Thurs: 1726 | Mon: 1743
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
7:30AM Golden Young Professionals Monthly Membership Meeting
8:45AM Silver Sneakers Classic
10-11:30AM Microsoft Word – Beyond the Basics
10AM Everything Dinosaur Talk – Archosaurs
10-10:30AM Mid-Morning Meditation
10:15-10:45AM Preschool Time with the Library
3-5PM Hard Times Writing Workshop
6-7PM Qs and Brews Trivia
6-7PM Preguntas y Respuestas sobre la Vacuna de COVID-19
7PM Parks, Recreation and Museums Advisory Board Meeting
The Parks, Rec, and Museum Board will be reviewing a draft of the RFP for an Open Space Master Plan. The City has 402 acres of open space and has never discussed and published a plan for that land. Is it future parkland? Land that the city could sell off for development? Should it remain untouched, or should we add trails and signs? According to the draft RFP, “The primary purpose of the Parks and Recreation Open Space Master Plan is to create a clear and concise policy for open space which includes: goals, objectives, definition and designation. The Plan will also provide guidance on development, re-development, maintenance, enhancement and future acquisitions.” The Plan will include: Definition of Open Space | Determination of Classifications of Open Space Parcels | Designation of Open Space Parcels | Capital Development | Maintenance Standards | Costs and Funding Sources. The budget for the plan is $30,000.
The board will also discuss a program that would allow dogs to go off-leash if their owners undergo training. See the meeting packet for more information about either topic.
Real Life Events
LIVE MUSIC:
6PM Open Pick Night at Over Yonder Brewing
8PM Danielle Nicole Band @ Buffalo Rose
Golden History Moment
Zeolites, Tombstones, and Paving Stones on North Table Mountain
by Donna Anderson
The top of North Table Mountain, now the North Table Mountain Open Space Park, is the site of two basalt quarries, one of which is the oldest quarry on both North and South Table Mountains.
In 1874 Arthur Lakes started collecting minerals and fossils to establish a geology museum at the Territorial School of Mines, which became Colorado School of Mines in 1876. One of his favorite places to collect minerals was on the south side of North Table Mountain, where natural holes in the lava flows, called vugs, held prized specimens of zeolite-family minerals such as analcime. He and his students opened a small quarry on the south side of North Table Mountain to collect zeolite minerals, becoming the first quarry on North Table Mountain.
In 1901, the mineral-collecting quarry became the site of one of the Whenestone/Blake quarries on North Table Mountain, operated by F.O. Blake, owner of Blake Asphalt and Paving Company. The massive basalt cliffs forming the rimrock were quarried for “monument” stones (tombstones), paving stones, and crushed rock. The biggest customer was the Denver City Tramway Company (later the Denver Tramway Co.), which had a substantial program of building roads and maintaining electrified interurban (streetcar) rail lines in the Denver-Golden area.
The Denver Tramway Company (DTC) took over operations of the south (aka Tramway) quarry in 1905. One of the difficulties of quarrying 700 feet above the Clear Creek Valley was getting the quarried stone down the hill. After some near-miss disasters with runaway wagons, the DTC installed an inclined tram in 1907 to transport rock more safely and quickly to a crushing facility in Clear Creek Valley, along the DTC 83-line that ran subparallel to 44th St. Worked on-and-off, the quarry was rejuvenated to pave West Colfax and South Golden Road in 1917. But, by 1923, the crusher and inclined tram had been abandoned, and the quarry lay dormant for decades. Fast-forwarding to 1973, a proposal to re-open the quarry tram-route fell on the deaf ears of the citizens of Jefferson County. Today, the old quarry is a site for mineral collectors (by permit from Jefferson County) and a great place to encounter rattlesnakes.
Sources:
Colorado Transcript, issues between 1901 and 1930.
Cross and Hillebrand, 1882, Zeolites in the basalt of Table Mountain, near Golden, Colorado: American Journal of Science: Article LII, v. 23, p. 452-458.
Robertson and Kenton, 2010, Denver’s street railways, volume 3, The Interurbans: Colorado Railroad Museum, 373 p.
VanderKwaak and others, Historic streetcar systems of Colorado: Report CDOT-2020-11, 440 p. https://www.codot.gov/programs/research/pdfs/2020-research-reports/historic-streetcar-systems-of-colorado-1/cdot-2020-11.pdf
Donna Anderson and Paul Haseman are still working on the book: Golden Rocks: The geology and mining history of Golden, CO. Delayed by the pandemic, it will be finished in 2021.
