55 Years Ago
This photo appeared on the front page of the Golden Transcript on July 16, 1970. The City campground was a point of considerable civic pride, and it made frequent appearances in the Transcript.
The area along 10th Street went through big changes during the 1950s and 1960s.
- In 1952, we built a new water treatment plant.
- In 1953, we closed the city dump, which had been located at the west end of 8th Street.
- In 1959, Golden voters approved construction of a new municipal center.
- In 1960, we opened a new recreation center (now the Golden Library) and a new outdoor swimming pool (now the lot where the Golden Farmers Market is held).
- In 1961 the new Fire Station/Police Station/City Hall opened at 911 10th St.
There’s a good reason why that land hadn’t been developed earlier: it was very much in Clear Creek’s flood plain, and much of it was either low and gravely (the sometimes creek bed) or low and swampy. It took a lot of earth moving and brush clearing over the years to make the area usable. The channel of the creek was straightened and deepened to deter future flooding.
In 1963, some community members began to speculate about building a city campground out near the water treatment plant. In 1964, the Golden Kiwanis Club took on the project and began clearing the scrubby growth out of the future campground. They cleared so much land that it went along the south side of the treatment plant (now the campground), behind it (now settling ponds), around to the north side (now the community garden area), and east of the treatment plant (now Lions Park).
They leveled ground for campsites and installed concrete fireplace rings with grills and picnic tables. The Arapahoe National Forest Service donated some super heavy-duty wooden picnic tables, which the Kiwanis painted green. The city laid gravel to form a central road within the campground and also graveled the individual campsites.
The campground opened in 1964 and was immediately popular with tourists. 1965 was the 50th anniversary of Kiwanis International, and the Golden club continued to work hard on improving the campground and the picnic area in celebration of that anniversary. They added electric lights and water fountains. They planted trees on arbor day.
A Transcript reporter interviewed several campers that year to see what they thought of our campground. They all loved it and thought Golden was a great town. One young woman said she particularly liked all the School of Mines boys, running around in their white shorts.
Letters to the editor of the Transcript came in regularly, thanking the town for the magnificent campground. Virginia Weigand, who wrote the Avenue Flashes column in the Transcript, checked on the campground frequently, and reported which states were represented by the campers. Her husband Fritz was a Kiwanian, so they had a strong family interest in the project.
There was an interesting event in 1969. One of the campers reported seeing a 55 gallon drum labeled “612 pound incendiary bomb – Rocky Mtn Arsenal” laying within the swirling waters of the creek. The Golden Fire and Police Departments found it, plus three other barrels in the bushes. They called the bomb disposal unit from Fort Carson, who retrieved the one from the creek and then carefully removed the lids from the barrels. “it was discovered that only some white gooky substance was inside. The drum in the stream was emptied then pulled up on the bank.” They speculated that the drums belonged to the School of Mines Research Foundation and had been used to store waste material of some kind.
Note that this event happened pre-EPA. I can’t help but wonder what the “white gooky substance” was.
The Kiwanis and the City continued to improve the park. In 1972, they replaced the porta-potties with permanent rest rooms. The campground had been free from the year it opened until 1972, but in that year they started charging $1/space/day, and hired someone to run the campground and keep it clean.
To this day, the campground continues to be an asset to the city. While most parks cost the city money to maintain, the campground is actually a revenue-generator.
The Golden Kiwanis Club went on to do more projects for the community. For many years now, they have partnered with Boy Scout Troop 130 to post American Flags all over town on Federal Holidays.
