I'm continuing yesterday's story of M.T. Morrill, president of the Golden Illuminating Company, Morrill lived at the corner of 12th and Arapahoe for 26 years. His predecessor in that house was Joseph Standley, a businessman who made a fortune in mining, then moved to Golden to pursue other investments. Standley Lake in Arvada is named after him.
Two years after he sold the Illuminating Company, Mr. Morrill was traveling home to Golden after visiting California. He became ill while driving through the desert. His traveling companion, his brother, apparently didn’t drive, because the two of them had to camp for four days before Mr. Morrill felt well enough to drive on. He made it as far as Las Vegas, New Mexico but died a day later of typhoid fever. That is something we rarely see these days (at least not in this country) because it’s acquired from drinking contaminated water. If we do get it, we can cure it with antibiotics.
The July 10, 1930 Colorado Transcript included this insight into Illuminating Company operations:
UNWRITTEN HISTORY
In this day when even a slight flicker of the electric lights is the signal for a rush of “trouble shooters” a few Golden people remember the old Golden Illuminating Company and its brand of juice.
Power was generated here in Golden, with steam. In the evening the engineer in charge would fire up and then adjourn to the Opera House Cigar store for a game of cards. There he would stay until the lights began to grown dim, when he would rush back to the power house, fire up again and hasten back to the game. Some evenings when the hand was particularly interesting and the game hard fought, the lights in Golden would be almost indistinguishable before the engineer could get back and get sufficient steam in his boiler.
Another thing old timers like to remember is that electric light globes were free. The customers merely turned in their burned out globes and received new ones in exchange.
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