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Veterans Day, a Legacy, and More Mines Buildings

Fall Yard Waste

The City’s trash collectors will be picking up yard waste all week. Have yours out at the curb in compostable bags on your usual trash pick-up day.

Veterans Day
Golden Cemetery will have an Avenue of Flags today, in honor of Veterans Day. The VFW Post 4171 will raise them between 7 and 8AM.

There will be no mail delivery today, and the library is closed.

10AM Dinosaur Ridge (map) is hosting a lecture on Hadrosaurs this morning.

6PM The City is offering their monthly Golden Safety Academy. Tonight’s topic is Youth Education & Safety in Schools Y.E.S.S. – Parent Academy – Digital Citizenship. Learn more and register.

6:30PM The GURA Board meets tonight in City Council Chambers. They will discuss their budget for next year, and review the draft IGA (Inter-Governmental Agreement) between GURA and the Downtown Development Authority. The agreement says that they will extend the time that GURA can exert control over the $1.8 million legacy fund.

“What is the legacy fund?” you might ask. It’s money that the Golden Urban Renewal Authority (GURA) had left when they finished their 20 year project of revitalizing downtown. They kept the money with the intention of using it for one last, major downtown project–a lasting legacy of GURA’s work to revitalize historic downtown Golden. The plan was that if they hadn’t found a suitable project by the end of 2019, they would hand the money over to the Downtown Development Authority. GURA is currently leaning towards spending some of that money to finish and “unblight” the Astor House, which is currently standing gutted and unusable, but they might not be able to pull it together by the end of the year. The DDA board has been anticipating receipt of that $1.8 million windfall, so they’re a little less anxious to make this agreement. They will discuss it at the November DDA meeting, next Monday.


The moon will be full tonight (actually 6:34AM tomorrow morning).


Yesterday’s write-up about buildings on the Mines campus contained an error. I said that the Green Center was built in 1992. I’m not sure where that came from. In fact, it was built in 1971.

In 2011, I wrote a book called A Guidebook to Golden Colorado*. It included several walking tours (Public Art, Historic Downtown, Historic Districts, and the Mines Campus). The building details that I provided yesterday came from my book. Several new buildings have been erected since I wrote the book, so that’s just one of many ways that it’s out of date, but here are four more of the buildings that were around when I wrote it:

Hill Hall – 1958
Nathaniel Hill was an early trustee of the school, who developed an effective process for smelting precious metals from complex sulfide ores. This process revived the gold-mining industry in the Central City region, which had been waning after the surface gold had been largely removed.
Steinhauer Field House – 1937
Frederick Steinhauer graduated from Mines in 1899 and served on the Board of Trustees for twenty years.
Stratton Hill – 1904
W.S. Stratton discovered the Independence Mine near Cripple Creek Colorado, which started the Cripple Creek gold rush. He also served as a Trustee to the School of Mines.
Volk Gymnasium – 1957
Russell Volk, class of 1926 with a Masters in 1931. Volk was considered one of the foremost athletes of his generation. He went on to a career in the petroleum industry and served on the School’s board of trustees, as President of the Alumni Association, and on the board of the Colorado School of Mines Foundation. This building is home to the Physical Education and Athletics Departments.

* The Guidebook to Golden Colorado is long since out of print, but if you’re interested in seeing it, the library still has a copy.

Highlights