61 Years Ago
The July 9th, 1964 Colorado Transcript reported that the 4th of July fireworks had fizzled that year. The Golden unit of the National Guard had set up the fireworks equipment–including sandbags and three mortars–on Castle Rock on the morning of the fourth. The “mortars” were wooden tubes that the City had constructed the previous year.
Sometime that afternoon, vandals pushed two of the mortars and all of the sandbags over the edge.
One of the mortars was stolen, but two were recovered from the mountainside below Castle Rock. The guardsmen retrieved the two mortars and returned them to the top of Castle Rock. Then they started the show. After five or six shells were fired, one of the sparks landed on the pile of fireworks that they planned to use and the entire collection went off at once. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
As Charlene Pazar recalls: “It truly was spectacular as long as it lasted!!”
For a longer, better version of this story, see Vic DeMaria’s post in the “You Might Be From Golden If” group on Facebook. If you’re not a member of that group, you should ask to be admitted–Vic posts a lot of great Golden history!
