Coronavirus Update
Public Health References
CDC * Jefferson County * City of Golden
As of last night, Jefferson County had reported only one new person with Coronavirus, bringing the total to 25 in our County. There has been a lot of emphasis on the vulnerability of our senior population, but it’s worth noting that “youngsters” aren’t immune. Here’s the age break-down of Jefferson County people who have tested positive:
1 teen | 3 in their 20s | 5 in their 30s | 4 in their 40s | 3 in their 50s | 5 in their 60s | 4 in their 70s
The School of Mines has announced that they have had a confirmed case on-campus (Berthoud Hall, to be exact). I’m not sure whether that accounts for the one addition at the county level.
The Golden Christian Action Guild food pantry is accepting donations of non-perishable food today from 9AM-4PM. They are located at 1401 Ford St. (map).
A lot of people are thinking about how to entertain the masses (that’s us) while we stay housebound. Big-name musicians are posting videos of themselves performing at their homes. Yesterday, I watched Yo-Yo Ma playing his cello at home, and Lin Manuel Miranda performing a song from Hamilton. I got a call from Kathy Smith of Golden United. They want to help Golden people to communicate with and entertain each other during periods of self-isolation. Kathy wondered whether I’d want to give a Golden history talk. I need to figure out the technology (and what to cover), but I think you’ll have a chance to hear me discourse on Golden history next week. I think it’ll be fun.
News of Golden Businesses
Baby Doe’s Clothing has decided to close down until things are safer. Customers are invited to contact the store to take advantage of a special deal: during the shut-down, you can buy a $125 gift card for only $100. If you do that, you’ll be supporting the store during this crisis and you’ll get a nice perk when they re-open! To buy a gift card, email the store: info@babydoesclothing.com. The store owner or a staff member will call to get payment information. They can mail the gift cards or hold them in the store.
The Golden Chamber and the City’s tourism department have compiled a list of Golden restaurants offering take-out food.
The Governor has mandated that hair and nail salons, spas, tattoo and massage parlors shut down until the end of April. That means more of our Golden neighbors will be out of work. Several groups are working on ways to help people who are losing their income because of the public health crisis, and I will certainly pass on anything I learn about Golden efforts.
CBS News Denver did a very nice piece on the hard-working employees at our Golden Safeway. It was fun to see the people I see so often–from local heroes to TV stars!
This Day in Golden History
Clear Creek: it kills the fish, but it’s fine to drink.
The March 20, 1974 Golden Transcript featured an article entitled “Tailing pollution called no health hazard.” A graduate student at the School of Mines had been studying the effluent from the Argo Tunnel in Idaho Springs. At that time it was draining 750,000 gallons of acidic mine water into Clear Creek daily. The researcher said that the water was not known to be harmful to humans drinking it; nonetheless, few fish lived in Clear Creek between Idaho Springs and Golden. The water quality was worse when the Creek was low, since that made the concentration of pollutants even higher. He remarked that the mine discharge “probably is not going to change much during our lifetime.” The article concluded that If reclamation proves too expensive or impractical, he said it would be necessary to “wait til the laws are there to force people to do it.”
Fortunately, a few years later clean water standards were enacted, the whole drainage area was declared a Superfund site, the tailings were cleaned up, and a water treatment plant was built to treat the water coming out of the Argo Tunnel. As a result, Golden now has a trout stream, kayak park, and tourist attraction instead of an industrial sewer running through town.
Read more about the history of water quality in Clear Creek.
Many thanks to the Golden History Museum for putting the historic Golden Transcripts online, and many thanks to the Golden Transcript for documenting our history since 1866!
