Golden has cause to celebrate: our newspaper, The Golden Transcript, turned 149 this month. They plan to hold several community celebrations over the next year, leading up to their 150th anniversary in December 2016.
The paper was started by George West, who helped found the town of Golden in 1859, before enlisting in the Union army and fighting in the Civil War. West was a colorful character–not only a good journalist, but an entertaining one. He was devoted to Golden and promoted it tirelessly for decades.
One of my favorite issues of the Transcript was published right after the Colorado Central Railroad was completed, thus establishing rail service from Denver to Golden. West devoted several columns of the paper to describing the celebrations that accompanied the event, then gloated about the advertising that the railroad would be running in his paper. After several short paragraphs on other topics, he suddenly burst out with this item: “We have no word of apology for the amount of space occupied this week by railroad matters. We feel good. In fact, we feel like a shooting star. Our railroad is finished and we are all hunky-dory.” (Colorado Transcript, September 28, 1870)
Old copies of the Transcript are available online, on the coloradohistoricnewspapers.org website. You’ll need to search for its original name–the Colorado Transcript.
Every history book that has been written about Golden has used The Golden Transcript as primary source material. We are so lucky to have had our own paper, chronicling life in Golden with an attention that the Denver papers would never have given us.
Congratulations to The Golden Transcript! May you be with us for another 150 years!