Events
Golden History Museum & Park programs explore a variety of historic subjects presented by expert instructors. Learn about your community or neighborhood. Apply historic skills in a modern way. Create something with your hands. There is sure to be a program to suit your interests!
Remember: Registration is required for most programs, even when free. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time. Help us provide even more programming by signing up and attending. [Click for registration instructions, or scroll to bottom.]
The Story of Reuben Benton Hayward’s Murder—Part 1
Sarah Hayward and her daughters, 13-year-old Cora and 11-year-old Minnie, watched as Reuben Benton Hayward slapped reins to the bays that pulled his wagon down the lane toward Mount Vernon Canyon. With him in the wagon were two strangers, purportedly dish washers from the Overland Hotel in Golden, who had asked him for a ride to the Rooney Ranch. The date was September 10, 1879, and it was the last time Sarah and the girls would see Reuben alive.
Dennis Potter, retired Captain of the Jefferson County Colorado Sheriff’s Department, criminal justice professor, and previous presenter of the popular “Operation Hideout: The Investigation into the Kidnapping and Murder of Adolph Coors III” returns for this exciting program.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
$0 members; $10 non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
Rowdy Colorado
Shell games, dollars hidden in soap bars, shoot-outs in saloons and in the streets, fawning ladies of the night, swarms of migrating rattlesnakes, and cattle rustling dandies all play their part in Colorado history.
Join us for a boisterous look at the early days of Colorado spanning from 1859-1930. Laughter encouraged.
Copies of Randi Samuelson-Brown‘s book, The Beaten Territory, will be available for purchase and signing.
Location and Pricing
5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
$0 members; $10 non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
The Story of Reuben Benton Hayward’s Murder—Part 2
Reuben Benton Hayward was dead. Two men, accused of his death, awaited their fate at the Jefferson County Jail. A few minutes before midnight, a party of horsemen numbering close to 35 approached the jail from the south. These horsemen were closely followed by an equal number of people riding in wagons or on foot. 
One rider climbed a telegraph pole and cut the wires. Any communications to and from Golden was now muted. All of them were either masked or had their faces blackened. They had tools with them and together worked to open the heavy metal front door to the County Jail.
They were determined to hang the two men lodged inside who two weeks earlier had murdered their neighbor and friend, Reuben Benton Hayward.
Dennis Potter, retired Captain of the Jefferson County Colorado Sheriff’s Department, criminal justice professor, and previous presenter of the popular “Operation Hideout: The Investigation into the Kidnapping and Murder of Adolph Coors III” returns for this exciting program.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
$0 members; $10 non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
The Failed 1976 Denver Winter Olympics
In 1972, Denver became the only host city to reject hosting the Olympic Games. For Colorado’s emerging ski industry, the voters’ rejection of the Games came as a blow. The state’s burgeoning ski industry joined the U.S. Forest Service in promoting the Winter Games, understanding them as a way to market the states burgeoning ski industry to the world, as well as leverage the development of a new ski resort. Yet, voters’ growing concerns over economic and environmental costs led to their rejection of the Olympics and marked the opening of the state’s political fight over growth, the environment, and ski resorts.
Presented by Dr. Michael Childers, Assistant Professor at Colorado State University and a sixth generation Coloradan. Raised in the Fraser Valley, he grew up skiing and watching the state’s mountain towns grow into sprawling resort communities. That experience led to his first book, Colorado Powder Keg: The Ski Industry and the Modern Environmental Movement. Tracing the history of the state’s ski industry and its role in reshaping U.S. Forest Service management, the book won the International Ski Association Ullr Award and was runner-up for the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award. Childers now lives in Fort Collins, where he teaches environmental history and is a member of the Public Lands History Center.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
Unconventional Women of the West
The Legendary Ladies, Inc.
In this presentation by The Legendary Ladies, Inc., you will meet fascinating women who made unique contributions to the American West. Find out:
- Who was an American folk hero
- Who organized a “little piece of heaven”
- Who was a Colorado frontier physician
- Whose activism helped develop labor relations
- Who was an eccentric legend in San Francisco
In first-person living history, these characters will share their struggles and triumphs as they visited and lived in the West.
The Legendary Ladies, Inc., are celebrating 27 years of “Making History Come Alive.” From 12 shows per year in 2006, this volunteer, non-profit organization, The Legendary Ladies, now appear in 50 shows annually. They perform spirited stories in a unique format, remembering and honoring remarkable women who were often forgotten.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
What’s Cooking in the Archives? A Food Historian’s View of Colorado Culinary Literature
Food history and food studies are more popular than ever. From bookshelves to university classrooms, we study the history of food because it tells us about what, how much, and why people ate what they did. Food history also tells us much about how people thought about health, what factors influenced their choices, and the rules of social engagement. This lecture will examine and explore what we can learn from cookbooks, an often-overlooked source for historians, by highlighting works from one of the most significant culinary archives in Colorado, the holdings at the University of Denver’s library.
Presented by Carol Helstosky, Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department at the University of Denver. She is the author of Garlic and Oil: Politics and Food in Italy (2004); Food Culture in the Mediterranean (2009) and Pizza: A Global History (2008) and editor of The Routledge History of Food (2014). She has been teaching food history to undergraduates for 20 years, utilizing the culinary archives at the DU library’s Special Collections and archives. 
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
Moving West: Who Moved to California in the 1930s and Why
Migration to California is one of the dominant history topics of the 1930s, built on a wealth of information from literature, news stories, and photographs. Using newly available data from the 1940 U.S. Census, this lecture will reveal insights on the people who moved, the places they came from, and why they may have moved, with special attention to the link between migration and the environmental trauma of the 1930s.
Presenter Myron Gutmann is Professor of History and Director of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he has worked since 2014. After receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University, Dr. Gutmann taught at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan, where he was also Director of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, the world’s largest archival repository of social science data. From 2009 to 2013 he served as Assistant Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation, where he was head of the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate. He is known for his research on the demographic history of Early Modern and Modern Europe, as well as the United States, and for his large-scale research program on the relationship between population and environment in the Great Plains of the United States. He has written or edited five books and more than 90 articles and chapters. 
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
How the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings Changed Baseball and America
The year 2019 marks the 150th anniversary of the formation of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball’s first openly all-professional team. Playing games in cities as far apart as Boston and San Francisco, and everywhere in-between, the Red Stockings operated somewhat like the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team. Spectators filled the stands to see whether a seemingly invincible team would lose. They never did. Successful on the field and at the box office, the Red Stockings created a model that other, more established baseball clubs quickly adopted, leading to the emergence of major league baseball.
Presenter Dr. Martin Babicz, Ph.D., teaches history at the University of Colorado Boulder for the Sewall Hall History & Culture Residential Academic Program, the Communications & Society Residential Academic Program, and the History Department. He received a B.A. in history from the University of Connecticut, and an M.A. in history from Brown University. After working as a lobbyist in Connecticut for fifteen years, he returned to graduate school and received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. His dissertation, which explores the intersection of colonial politics and imperial policy during the Stamp Act crisis, is entitled For Empire, Colony, and Self-Interest: Thomas Fitch and Connecticut Colonial Politics. Dr. Babicz teaches several courses on American History. He is the co-author (with Thomas W. Zeiler) of National Pastime: U.S. History through Baseball (2017), and he is the author of a chapter exploring the historiography of sports and pastimes of the 1920s in A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover (2014).
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
Coloradans Choose Their Capital, 1861-1881
For 20 years, the seat of Colorado’s government remained unsettled. Denver dominated the region from the onset of the gold rush, but resentment from other communities about Denver’s wealth and power led to a political struggle for years. This presentation will outline the battle between Denver, Golden, Colorado City, and other towns over the seat of government, and how the largest city ultimately prevailed.
Presenter Dr. Derek R. Everett is a Colorado native who grew up in Arvada and teaches in the History Departments at Metro State in Denver and Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He has published books on western state boundaries and the Colorado State Capitol, and researches and writes on various subjects of Colorado and western American history.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
May Homesteaders’ Day
Celebrate Homesteaders’ Day! Experience 19th century homesteading, explore the historic cabins, try woodstove cooking, learn about blacksmithing, and take a lesson at the one-room schoolhouse. This event is drop-in style; there is no registration. Come any time between 10 am and 2 pm for any length of time.
The History Park is home to many of the original buildings from the old Pearce Ranch in Golden Gate Canyon. Thomas and Henrietta Pearce, pictured here, raised eight children on their ranch. It was one of the largest in the area by 1912.
Thomas and Henrietta Pearce
Stroll through this park and imagine yourself growing potatoes or raising chickens as part of a homesteading family. Peek through the windows of real 1800s cabins and see other buildings from the ranch like the barn, chicken coop and two-seat outhouse.
Also, see the 1876 Guy Hill schoolhouse which was originally located in the canyon too, but on a different property. It served the needs of canyon locals until 1951.
Location and Pricing
Golden History Park
10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.; drop in anytime
Free for all
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
Our rustic three-acre park is ideal for those with a “Do It Yourself (DIY)” mindset. Whether you are interested in having your wedding ceremony and/or reception with us or intent on hosting a large event such as family reunion or a corporate retreat, Golden History Park offers a unique experience for your guests. It’s only a short walk from downtown Golden which features shopping, restaurants, and more.
A Different Kind of Pilgrim to Early New England
When we think about the key figures of early American history, we think of explorers, or Pilgrims, or Native Americans—not cattle, or goats, or swine. But livestock played a vitally important role in the colonization of the New World. These animals helped to sustain English colonists but also generated friction with Indians and became a driving force in westward expansion.
A specialist in the history of colonial and revolutionary America, presenter Dr. Virginia DeJohn Anderson has taught at the University of Colorado Boulder since 1985. This talk is derived from her second book, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (2004). Her most recent book is The Martyr and the Traitor: Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution (2017).
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
Western Women through American Art
What does it take to be a Western woman? We might not see many women within Western American art, but that does not mean women never ventured west or were not making art out west. Come explore the important Western women including the first Anglo woman that traveled west, the partner of a prominent western artist, and women artists working in the West, among many more.
Presented by Colleen Sullivan, Program and Marketing Coordinator at the American Museum of Western Art – The Anschutz Collection.
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- Grasshopper Dance, Hudson
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- Courtship On The Plains, John Mix Stanley, after 1846, 30x44″
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- Portrait of Mabel Dodge Luhan, Nicolai Ivanovich Fechin, 1927, 50x40″
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
June Homesteaders’ Day
Celebrate Homesteaders’ Day! Experience 19th century homesteading, explore the historic cabins, try woodstove cooking, learn about blacksmithing, and take a lesson at the one-room schoolhouse. This event is drop-in style; there is no registration. Come any time between 10 am and 2 pm for any length of time.
The History Park is home to many of the original buildings from the old Pearce Ranch in Golden Gate Canyon. Thomas and Henrietta Pearce, pictured here, raised eight children on their ranch. It was one of the largest in the area by 1912.
Thomas and Henrietta Pearce
Stroll through this park and imagine yourself growing potatoes or raising chickens as part of a homesteading family. Peek through the windows of real 1800s cabins and see other buildings from the ranch like the barn, chicken coop and two-seat outhouse.
Also, see the 1876 Guy Hill schoolhouse which was originally located in the canyon too, but on a different property. It served the needs of canyon locals until 1951.
Location and Pricing
Golden History Park
10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.; drop in anytime
Free for all
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
Our rustic three-acre park is ideal for those with a “Do It Yourself (DIY)” mindset. Whether you are interested in having your wedding ceremony and/or reception with us or intent on hosting a large event such as family reunion or a corporate retreat, Golden History Park offers a unique experience for your guests. It’s only a short walk from downtown Golden which features shopping, restaurants, and more.
Now You See It: Saving Your Family Photos
This workshop will acquaint attendees with the history of photographs and provide details on how we can preserve them for future generations. Photo preservation is hugely important for historic photos, as well as digital images captured in the twenty-first century. Bring your own photos to practice these preservation techniques.
Presenter Dr. Rebecca A. Hunt is Associate Professor C/T in history at the University of Colorado Denver. She teaches gender, immigration and American Western history as well as museum studies.
Rebecca’s books include A Century of Healing: Swedish Medical Center (2005), Wyoming Medical Center: A Centennial History (2011), Natrona County: People, Place and Time (2011), and Casper Chronicles II (2016). Rebecca was the historian for A Woman to Match a Mountain (2008) a documentary on Neal Forsling, Casper, Wyoming homesteader, artist and writer. Her current projects are Urban Pioneers: Continuity and Change in Two Denver Immigrant Neighborhoods and Snow Stories: Skiing in Central Wyoming.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
Denver Riots of 1880
On October 31, 1880, tensions between Chinese and white miners reached a boiling point and a riot broke out in Denver. By the end of the evening one Chinese man was dead and Chinatown had burned to the ground.
Presenter Grace Brown is Education Assistant at Golden History Museum & Park.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free for members; $10 plus online registration fee for non-members
Membership
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
Click the green ticket button in the upper left of each event to buy tickets online. 
Click “read more” in the lower right of each event for details. 
Read the fine print and policies below (updated 11-20-18).
Event and Program Ticketing Policies at Golden History Museum & Park
Please note: Tickets will only be available at the door if the program reaches its pre-registration minimum.
Weather: All events are rain or shine. Tickets will not be refunded for any inclement weather including but not limited to snow, wind, rain or extreme temperatures.
Cancellation: GHM&P reserves the right to cancel a program for any reason. A full refund will occur automatically and notification sent if GHM&P cancels a program for any reason.
Refunds: Participants will not receive a refund except in the event that GHM&P cancels the program.
Facilities: Restrooms are not available on-site at the Golden History Park or Golden Cemetery. If at the Golden History Park, participants may use public restrooms located on 12th Street. Please call ahead to ask about accessibility concerns and mobility recommendations.
Additional details: Please note the minimum age requirements of some of our programs. Excessive disruptive behavior and any safety risks may result in a participant being asked to leave a program at the instructor’s discretion. Pets are not permitted at programs; service animals are permitted.
To purchase tickets, cancel your registration, or learn more about our events and ticketing policy, please call the Golden History Museum front desk during business hours at 303-278-3557.