Goosetown is one of our oldest neighborhoods and is the newest addition to the City’s property.
What exactly is Goosetown? There isn’t an exact definition–it’s not an officially designated district. Roughly speaking, it’s the area north of the Creek, south of Highway 58, and east of Ford Street. It includes the spot where the Coors office building once stood, and the parking lots across from that spot. The other chief buildings in the neighborhood are the Golden Masonic Temple, the American Legion hall, Goosetown Station, Golden Well Being Collective, and the Burgess House apartment building.
David Wall, who may have been Golden’s very first (white) settler, planted a vegetable garden in that area in the spring of 1859. aHe dug a ditch from Tucker Gulch to his field, thus earning two titles–“the Father of Colorado agriculture” and “the Father of Colorado irrigation.”
In 1870, the Colorado Central Railroad came to town. Having a railroad put Golden on the map: because of it, we were able to develop significant industry and commerce. The Colorado Central’s roundhouse, machine shop, and freight depot were built in the Goosetown area, and many boarding houses and homes were soon built in the vicinity to house the railroad workers.
Why was it called “Goosetown?” I’ve heard a couple different answers to that question (and both may be untrue). One is that the brewery kept a flock of geese, and they wandered around the neighborhood, honking. The other answer is that the women of the neighborhood, many foreign-born, kept up a steady stream of chatter, unintelligible to those who only spoke English, who claimed the women sounded like a flock of geese.
The Colorado Central was built to service the mountain mining towns (Blackhawk, Central City, Idaho Springs, Georgetown, etc.) as well as transporting freight and people between Denver and Golden. By the 1930s, automobiles and trucks were taking the place of railroads, and the railroad employed fewer and fewer people.
After World War II, Coors entered a time of tremendous growth. To enable their expansion, they gradually purchased property adjacent to the brewery. The Goosetown neighborhood was particularly affected. Where there once were a few dozen homes, we now see parking lots and Highway 58.
Moving 10th Street
In 1975, Coors needed more room for beer “cellars,” the buildings where beer is stored for aging. They approached the City of Golden, proposed an exchange of several parcels of land, and asked the City to allow them to reroute 10th Street to make room for their newest building.
The July 28, 1975 Golden Transcript reported that the exchange of land and rights of way was complete, and that 10th Street had been rebuilt at Coors’ expense.
Building and Demolishing the Office Building
The September 9, 1980 Golden Transcript announced Coors’ plan to expand the brewery and construct a new office building on 10th Street between Archer and Vasquez. The article said that the new building would be 150 feet wide by 250 feet long, five stories tall, and 154,600 square feet. It would include a cafeteria and a small park. They anticipated moving into the building in September of 1981.
In 2019, Coors contacted the City to say they would be selling the building and adjacent property. The City wanted more room for city staff, the history museum, a cultural center, and affordable housing and the much-larger office building seemed like a great answer to those various needs, so they bought it from Coors at a cost of $12.5 million. They then decided that the building would not meet the City’s needs, so they demolished it.
The City plans to build a new City Hall and police department on the site of the former Coors building at a cost of $60-65 million.
With this addition, Goosetown will likely see a resurgence. There are very few homes left in that area, but the area may see commercial and multi-family development. The Heart of Golden design drawings show new parks and landscaping along the Creek. Eventually, they hope to persuade RTD to bring the gold line into Golden. That would make Goosetown a prime location for transit-oriented development.
