50 Years Ago
The May 27, 1975 Golden Transcript included a brief article entitled “Busing comes to Golden, kind of.” That titled would have resonated with the readership of that time in a way it no longer does. From 1973-1995, Denver was one of several cities around the country with a mandatory busing program, where children were bused from one district to another, in an effort to desegregate schools.
In this case, it referred to Coors brewery tours. That year, Coors was trying to solve a long-standing parking problem. For many years, visitors taking the brewery tour had parked in the triangle-shaped lot near the brewery entrance. The lot was always full to overflowing and they often had to turn away visitors.
Coors was considering having tourists park at their property on McIntyre Street. The downtown merchants didn’t like that idea because Coors visitors brought a lot of business to the downtown stores and restaurants.
The company had purchased the block between Ford and East, 13th and 14th Streets several years earlier. That block had held the Catholic church and Duvall-Davison lumber yard since the turn of the century, but both were torn down in 1973.
They decided to try having visitors park in that lot. They hired parking lot attendants and bought vans to bring their visitors from the new parking lot to the tour entrance. They considered it an experiment and quickly decided that it was working well.
Apparently, the system remained satisfactory, since Coors is still using that lot and shuttling visitors to the tour entrance. When Coors tours reopened after the COVID shutdown, they discontinued the free tours and moved to a paid, ticketed system. The demand still exceeds supply of available tickets!
