Golden was on a self-improvement drive in the 1920s. They began paving streets for the first time. They turned the town dump into a city park (Parfet). And they built a new high school. The school, entirely separated from the lower grades and built in the latest style, was a point of enormous civic pride.
The one drawback to the site was the lack of ground around the building. There was no room for outdoor gym classes and there were no athletic fields. There was no place for a marching band to practice!
The October 6, 1955 Colorado Transcript explains how they solved that last problem.
Folks who live on Ninth street are enjoying their seasonal entertainment provided by the Golden high school band which finds this street most adaptable for marching practice. The band is shown here in formation and at attention in practicing maneuvers Monday. Several regular fans–some of them little folks too young to attend school–come as soon as they hear the band and sit on the curb or in their gardens or on back porches to watch and listen.
Even after they moved to the current location on 24th Street, the band stuck with their old habits of practicing in the street. The photo below shows the band marching on Willow Creek Drive, a block-long street across from the 1956 school.
