Last week's Golden Hour MashUp was quite enjoyable—low-key, fun, and interesting. It was designed to appear to locals, and I ran into a lot of Golden friends.
The August theme was "Show Us How You're Golden," so I rummaged through my t-shirt collection to find appropriately Golden garb. I found some impressively old ones.
Foss Drug was an anchor in downtown Golden from 1913-2007. The Foss family invested in downtown Golden before the downtown renaissance and still owns several of the commercial buildings. They were founding sponsors of the Golden Civic Foundation. Learn more about Foss Drug.
The Golden Landmarks Association shirt dates from 2006. The occasion was a "funeral" for a large cottonwood tree that was scheduled for removal by the City. Popular (and inaccurate) legend had long held that the tree had been used to hang a man, so it was often called the hanging tree.
The funicular shirt celebrated the release of my 2012 book, Funiculars of Golden Colorado. It features a painting by Jesse Crock showing the Castle Rock Mountain Railway, which opened in 1913. Learn more about Golden's funicular railways.
The Golden Gallop race was first run in 2006. It raises funds to support Golden-area schools. We chose this shirt from our collection of Gallop shirts because it features my husband's elderly mustang mare, Riley, who always attends as the race mascot.
The Golden Transcript has been covering Golden news since 1866. They printed t-shirts in 2016 in celebration of their sesquicentennial anniversary.
The Golden Fine Arts Festival began in 1990. This particular shirt dates from 2018 and features a Jesse Crock painting showing Golden at night.
The Golden Film Festival, established in 2003, was a community-run event which initially offered Oscar-winning documentaries and evolved to include juried independent films. It was held in the School of Mines Student Center. The founders established a non-profit called G.R.E.A.T. (Golden Resource for Education, Arts, and Theater). During the summer, they presented movies in the park. On one memorable evening, they showed The Sound of Music in Lions Park. That is a long movie, and before it ended, the sprinklers came on and chased the crowd away.
G.R.E.A.T. ended after eleven years, but it has two notable modern descendants. The Colorado Environmental Film Festival was starting up as G.R.E.A.T. was winding down, and G.R.E.A.T. was able to transfer their non-profit entity to C.E.F.F., thus giving that festival a head start. Movies in the Park was so popular that the City approached the group in 2005 to merge its Concerts in the Park with the movies. The City of Golden eventually took over the series, and it lives on as Movies and Music in the Park.
The Golden Community Center opened in 1994, and apparently it was a t-shirt-worthy event. Learn more about the origins of the Community Center.
The Wild West Auto Roundup was a car show in downtown Golden. Washington Avenue and some of the side streets were lined with classic cars and appreciative crowds admired their spotless engines and flawless paint jobs. The event was held for several years in the early 2000s. This particular t-shirt is dated 2009 and includes the logo from Golden's sesquicentennial celebration (1859-2009).
