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.]
photo: Scott Dressel-Martin
Join us at Golden History Museum for storytime. We’ll read books related to various themes found inside the museum.
No registration.
Free for all.
Attention kids of all ages! Join us at the Golden History Museum for our brand-new “Golden Past-port” series. Each event will take an in-depth look at a museum artifact. Attendees will try new skills, make some art, and take home your own version of the artifact. Earn a stamp for each event you attend and collect as many as you can!
- Golden Past-port Series: Hair Art
- Saturday, October 19 @ 10:30 am
- Golden History Museum
- Registration required
- Free for members; $5 + fee for non-members (per child)
- During the Victorian era, family members would remember each other by keeping and displaying their hair. Join us as we discover the hair art at the museum and attempt to make an ornament of our own.
Location and Pricing
Free for members; $5 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.
Wild Things in Ancient Places: The Archaeology of the National Wildlife Refuges
Somewhere beneath the tracks of the bison, the nests of the piping plover, and the burrows of the black-footed ferret are the tools and fires of earlier peoples. These animals and their habitats are protected on our National Wildlife Refuges – a system of public lands that also offers a rare opportunity to preserve archaeological sites and historic places (and the occasional dinosaur). The eight states that comprise the Mountain – Prairie Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge system extend from the Canadian border to the desert southwest. The cultural resources of the region span 12,000 years from Paleoindian camp sites to Depression-era fire towers. The paleontological remains, archaeological sites, and historic structures found on the Refuges are diverse and wonderful and provide some unique challenges.
Presented by Meg Van Ness, Regional Historic Preservation Officer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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.
Golden Cemetery Tour 2019
Visit the graves of legendary Golden characters. Hear stories about their lives from famous storyteller, Dennis Potter, Museum volunteer since 2008 and retired Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department Captain. Read Dennis’s profile.
Tours begin and end at the Golden Cemetery. This program sells out every year, so get your tickets early. This is a rain-or-shine event; weather will not force a cancellation.
Two tours are available:
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10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
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12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
Pricing
$0 members; $10 non-members, plus online registration fee
Membership pays for itself with just a few programs for your family. Join us.
About Golden Cemetery
The City of Golden owns and operates the Golden Cemetery. Among the historic notables buried here is George West. West, a Golden founder, started the Colorado Transcript newspaper in 1866.
Additionally, Seth Lake, builder of Astor House in 1867, is buried in the Golden Cemetery. Many other pioneers and characters of the early west are at rest here.
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.
More than a Headstone: The Lives and Legacies of Veterans buried at Fort Logan National Cemetery
DENVER, CO – MAY 27: A U.S flag is placed at every burial site in Fort Logan National Cemetery in recognition of Memorial Day on May 27, 2019 in Denver, Colorado. Fort Logan National Cemetery has 214 acres and has over 122,000 interments as of 2014. (Photo By Kathryn Scott/Special to The Denver Post)
The Veterans Legacy Program (VLP) is part of the National Cemetery Administration’s educational outreach initiative. Partnering with universities, VLP seeks to memorialize our nation’s Veterans through sharing their stories of service and sacrifice. Come hear the stories behind a few of our local heroes resting at Fort Logan Cemetery. Presented by Professors Carol Helstosky and Elizabeth Escobedo, along with a few of their amazing University of Denver students.
Elizabeth Escobedo is an associate professor of Latina/o history, with a specialization in 20th century Mexican American history. She enjoys teaching a wide-range of topics in U.S. history, including modern America, the Latina/o and Chicana/o experience, women and gender, and the history of race and ethnicity in America. Her book, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front, was published in 2013 with the University of North Carolina Press. She has also appeared in two PBS documentaries, “Zoot Suit Riots” and “Latino Americans.” Her current book project is a comparative history of Mexican American and Puerto Rican women in the World War II U.S. military.
Carol Helstosky is Associate Professor of History 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).
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.
A grand view from the summit of the funicular railway.
Attention kids of all ages! Join us at the Golden History Museum for our brand-new “Golden Past-port” series. Each event will take an in-depth look at a museum artifact. Attendees will try new skills, make some art, and take home your own version of the artifact. Earn a stamp for each event you attend and collect as many as you can!
- Golden Past-port Series: Mining
- Saturday, November 16 @ 10:30 am
- Golden History Museum
- Registration required
- Free for members; $5 + fee for non-members (per child)
- Earn a stamp for your “past-port!” Join us for funicular fun as we visit the burros in Epic Events and learn about the hikes they used to take up to South Table Mountain. If visitors didn’t ride up the mountain on a burro’s back, they might climb into a funicular that would pull them up the mountain. We’ll try to make our own indoor funicular and imagine what it might be like to see historic Golden from the top of the mountain.
Location and Pricing
Free for members; $5 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.
photo: Scott Dressel-Martin
Join us at Golden History Museum for storytime. We’ll read books related to various themes found inside the museum.
No registration.
Free for all.
A Ragged Rabble of Opportunists
SS Central America
In the spring of 1857, the SS Central America was shipping a special load of gold from San Francisco to New York when it sank in a hurricane one hundred and sixty miles east of Cape Hatteras. News of the disaster reached the east coast and ignited the financial panic of 1857. In response, seven members of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association of Boston took advantage of the crisis to establish a frontier town in Colorado Territory.
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.
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.
Stroll through the History Museum on Candlelight Walk night and take a selfie in our “Epic Events” exhibit or listen to cheery holiday music. Visit the History Park and try a roasted chestnut. Explore the inside of the Pearce/Helps Cabin, warm up at the wood stove, watch live blacksmithing, and enjoy music and singing.
The History Park is home to many of the original buildings from the old Pearce Ranch in Golden Gate Canyon. Thomas and Henrietta Pearce raised eight children on their ranch. It was one of the largest in the area by 1912. Read more here.
These programs are free and there is no registration. Donations for park and museum programming are appreciated!
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.
The Maps that Made America
Susan Schulten
Whether as handmaidens of diplomacy, instruments of social reform, or even advertisements, maps have been central to American history. Across five centuries, maps have captured what people knew, what they thought they knew, what they hoped for, and what they feared. As such, they have the power to both illuminate and complicate our understanding of the past. Join us as Susan Schulten explores the myriad ways that maps have both reflected and shaped American history, narrating our past from the voyages of discovery to the digital age.
Susan Schulten has taught at the University of Denver since 1996, and from 2010 to 2017 served as chair of the history department. She is author of A History of America in 100 Maps (2018), Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America (2012) and The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950 (2001). She is also editor of Constructing the American Past, a two-volume history of America with Oxford University Press.
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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.
An Empire of the Mind: Science and American Foreign Relations since World War II
Dr. Greg Whitesides
The sciences played a critical role in American foreign policy after World War II. From atomic energy and satellites to the green revolution, scientific advances were central to American diplomacy in the early Cold War, as the United States leveraged its scientific and technical preeminence to secure alliances and markets. The growth of applied research in the 1970s, exemplified by the biotech industry, led the United States to promote global intellectual property rights. Priorities shifted with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as attention turned to information technology and environmental sciences. Today, international relations take place within a scientific and technical framework, whether in the headlines on global warming and the war on terror or in the fine print of intellectual property rights. This lecture provides the historical background necessary to understand the contemporary geopolitics of science.
Dr. Greg Whitesides’ primary interests are the history of science, U.S. foreign policy and 20th century global history. His PhD studies emphasized the history of science, which involved archival research at the Human Genome Project, the National Institutes of Health and the National Archives (among others), and the eventual publication on the regulation of genetics and biomedicine.
After graduation, Dr. Whitesides worked for the University of Maryland and the Department of Defense in Japan and South Korea before being hired by the University of Colorado in 2004. Since then, he has taught over 20 different classes in the CU system.
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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.
photo: Scott Dressel-Martin
Join us at Golden History Museum for storytime. We’ll read books related to various themes found inside the museum.
No registration.
Free for all.
Make Waves: Water in Contemporary Literature and Film
Paula Farca
Water is a symbol of life, wisdom, fertility, purity, and death. But a strain has been put on our water resources as increased energy demands combined with the effects of climate change to create a treacherous environment. In this program, hear author and Colorado School of Mines Professor Paula Farca discuss current water issues in the era of climate change using a wide variety of recent literature and film. At its core, this lecture demonstrates that water is an immense reservoir of artistic potential and an agent of historical and cultural exchange.
Paula Farca received her PhD and a second MA from Oklahoma State University. Her research focuses on two main areas- contemporary, indigenous, and women’s literature and literature on energy and the environment. Along with numerous articles and book chapters, Paula has published Identity in Place: Contemporary Indigenous Fiction by Women Writers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (2011) and coauthored A Student’s Guide to Nature and Human Values (2010 and 2013). Paula also edited two anthologies: Energy in Literature: Essays on Energy and Its Social and Environmental Implications in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literary Texts (2015) and Speculations: An Anthology for Reading, Writing, and Research (2006). Since 2008, when she joined HASS, she has tried to introduce our future engineers to the joy and intellectual excitement of reading and critical thinking and inspire them to become competent writers.
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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.
photo: Scott Dressel-Martin
Join us at Golden History Museum for storytime. We’ll read books related to various themes found inside the museum.
No registration.
Free for all.
Attention kids of all ages! Join us at the Golden History Museum for our brand-new “Golden Past-port” series. Each event will take an in-depth look at a museum artifact. Attendees will try new skills, make some art, and take home your own version of the artifact. Earn a stamp for each event you attend and collect as many as you can!
- Golden Past-port Series: Mining
- Saturday, January 25 @ 10:30 am
- Golden History Museum
- Registration required
- Free for members; $5 + fee for non-members (per child)
- Think you have what it takes to be a miner? Learn about various mining techniques, see if you can extract chocolate chip “coal” out of cookies, and earn a stamp in your “past-port.”
Location and Pricing
Free for members; $5 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.