Golden's first power was supplied by the Golden Illuminating Company in 1887. Its original business was powering streetlights, but it soon began offering electrical service to Golden homes and businesses.
1915
Jefferson County Power and Light Company purchased the Golden Illuminating Company in 1915. This company moved their offices to Washington Avenue and had a small showroom of electrical appliances. In fact, a big part of their business plan involved selling appliances on the installment plan. For a time, the company would not sell them outright–they insisted on adding payments to the monthly electric bills. This company extended service beyond the Golden city limits, into Fairmount and Morrison. By 1926, they had grown from approximately 300 customers to 1,242.
1926
Several regional power companies, including Jeffco Power & Light were consolidated to form Colorado Central Power Company. The new company covered Golden, Morrison, Englewood, Littleton, Fort Lupton, Platteville, Johnstown, Milliken, Hudson, and Keenesburg. The new company’s main offices were in Golden, on Washington Avenue. They continued to push electrical appliances, but by this time they had competition from stores, including Linder Hardware, just down the block. They began advertising that cooking with electricity was cheaper and cleaner than cooking with coal or wood (no soot).
1930s
By the early 1930s, the company was serving 7,500 consumers in 11 towns. They began servicing Pleasant View in 1930. They experienced some ripple effects from the 1929 stock market crash. Colorado Central Power Company was owned by a parent company–Empire Public Service, based in Delaware. That company was over-extended, and in 1930 they offered stock, promising to pay a dividend of 6-1/2%. A number of Golden people bought into that offer. By 1932, Empire was in receivership, and its investors lost their money. Nonetheless, Colorado Central Power continued on.
During the 1930s, they supplied power to several WPA (Roosevelt-era public works) projects, including CCC camps in Morrison and Mount Vernon Canyon, the new dam for Ralston Reservoir, and Camp George West. As the Depression lingered, they stopped the relentless advertising of appliances and instead began a decades-long campaign to get people to use more electricity. They emphasized that the more electricity the public used, they cheaper they could provide it.
In the post-World War II era, they continued to encourage everyone to improve their lives by using as much electricity as possible. A 1959 advertisement showcased this house on 18th Street as being thoroughly modern, with plenty of electrical conveniences:
The goal of reducing energy consumption was a few decades away!
In 1961, Colorado Central Power Company merged with Public Service Company. Thereafter, they operated as Public Service and supplied natural gas as well as electricity. Public Service merged with Xcel in 2000 and has operated under that name ever since.
