You’ve likely seen this picture before. Have you ever wondered why there are people frolicking around the brewery and boating in the ponds?
When the brewery was new, Coors had a beer garden, picnic grove, and mini-amusement park on the grounds. The area had trees, picnic tables, and swings. The ponds, which Coors built to make ice in the winter, were open to boating and even swimming. Coors sold beer and other refreshments, and they rented out the grounds for group picnics. The Colorado Transcript referred to the grove as “the Golden Park.”
Here’s a lovely description of the community’s 4th of July plans for 1878. Everyone met on Washington Avenue and formed a parade to walk over to the Coors property.
The afternoon exercises will begin at three o’clock, and consist of music, swinging, boating, dancing, sack racing and pole climbing for prizes. The programme of the celebration will be completed by a magnificent display of fireworks from the top of Castle Rock, seven hundred feet above the town, and a grand dance in the newly finished and elegant pavilion at the Golden Park grounds. At the Park in the evening the entire grounds will be brilliantly illuminated by Chinese lanterns.
Colorado Transcript – June 12, 1878
Eventually, the picnic grounds became the Coors’ private home and yard. Adolph Coors and his wife raised their family in the big house on the grounds. In later years, cottages were added as the next generation married and started families of their own.
The brewery buildings eventually crowded out both the old trees and the family cottages. The Coors mansion still stands in the midst of the brewery, but it is no longer occupied.
