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Golden Smelter, located on 10th St./44th Avenue, across Clear Creek from Coors – click to enlarge - Click to enlarge


108 Years Ago

The February 1, 1917 Colorado Transcript tells of three Golden youths who decided to stage some hold ups on cars driving past the Golden Smelter.

Inspired by the daring deeds of Diamond Dick, Deadshot Harry and Old Sleuth, three young Golden boys, Fred Williams, Albert Hyland and Ralph Futhey attempted to hold up eight auto parties near the Golden smelter Sunday evening….The boys got hold of a big six gun somewhere and fashioned a mask out of an old handkerchief. As a machine approached slowly after topping the smelter hill one of the lads stopped from the side of the road and leveling the gun at the driver commanded him to stop.

Six of the drivers accelerated past without stopping. Two stopped, but the bandit made no further demands so the drove away. The drivers called the sheriff, who tracked down the boys and arrested them the next morning.

The boys say they were “only fooling.”

The February 15th Transcript reported that Judge Jameson sentenced all three to the reform school, but after further consideration he gave them a stern lecture and converted the sentence to probation, subject to future good behavior.

A little more research uncovered the fact that one of the boys–Albert Hyland–was a freshman at Golden High School (so they were quite young!).

Highlights