Events
Golden History Museum & Park events and programming 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!
Click the green ticket button in the upper left of each event to buy tickets online. 
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 “read more” in the lower right of each event for details. 
In celebration of its 80th anniversary, Golden History Museum has undergone a complete transformation of its galleries and public spaces. After being closed for a six-month renovation, the museum is set to reopen to visitors on Saturday, June 23. Free admission will be offered from 10 am—4:30 pm. There will be no registration.
The revamp is the culmination of a three-year, $350,000 campaign named Discovery Awaits. “When we first began this project, we started by gathering feedback from stakeholders about what was most important to them,” explained GHM director Nathan Richie. “We heard that people wanted three key things: to see a fuller view of Golden’s history and people, to have greater access to the museum’s collection and historic resources, and to get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes work of preservation and research. We developed a new museum concept that brought the back-of-the-house work to the front, and sparked a sense of wonder and discovery for our visitors. We want to invite guests to drop in anytime and always find something new to discover.”
Museum staff worked with Boulder-based design firm Studio Tectonic to develop a plan to turn the 50-year-old former library space into a cohesive, multifaceted experience for visitors.
Deciding what stories to tell and which objects to present is a challenge answered by GHM curator Mark Dodge. “Golden has and continues to be a magnet for interesting individuals who’ve made contributions to Colorado and globally,” said Dodge. “In GHM’s new biographies exhibit, Legendary People, we decided to begin by highlighting the accomplishments of Golden’s women.” The fresh exhibit showcases stories of entrepreneurs like Margaret Isley, founder of Natural Grocers, to adventurers like the “Mother of the Colorado Trail” Gudy Gaskill, to US Women’s Soccer Olympian, Lindsey Horan.
In addition to the Legendary People exhibit, other new additions to the museum include:
- History Lab where visitors can discover GHM’s premier photography, object and newspaper collections up close. Visitors can interact with staff and volunteers researching and cataloguing new artifacts.
- The Salon, a flexible programming area featuring an exciting display of objects from Golden’s Wild West era and a theater to show GHM’s film collection.
- Touch Gallery displays a hands-on celebration of the city’s clay mining and industrial brickmaking heritage specifically geared to families with young children.
- Epic Events is a timeline of Golden’s formative events that have shaped the community, whether for better or worse.
Additionally, a new temporary exhibit titled Two Views of Magic Mountain will highlight contrasting epochs at this unique site. At least 6,000 years ago, ancient Native Americans inhabited semi-permanent villages in the area. Excavated most recently by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, objects from the Magic Mountain site will be on view for the first time ever at GHM. Fast forward several millennia: the same site held the first theme park built outside of California. The short-lived Magic Mountain Amusement Park featured thematic rides and experiences designed by former Disney artists. Original conceptual drawings, blueprints, and maps of Magic Mountain are on display.
Colorado Experience: Amusements
Partnering with Rocky Mountain PBS, join us to view Colorado Experience: Amusements. Then stay and listen to an expert share the history of Golden and Denver-metro amusement parks.
Location and Pricing
Golden History Museum (previously scheduled to be held at Golden Community Center)
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Free for all.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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.
Historic Brewing with Avery Brewing Company
Travis Rupp, lecturer at CU Boulder, and Beer Archaeologist and Innovation & Wood Cellar Manager at Avery Brewing Company, will give a lecture on the development of his Ales of Antiquity Series. The program will focus on his most recent research regarding early monastic brewing, ancient beer culture in the environs of the Dead Sea, and ancient Iberian brewing. He will also discuss his newest project which brings the Ales of Antiquity Series home to Golden, Colorado.
Location and Pricing
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
free for members; $10 non-members.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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 Sketch Walk
Join Golden illustrator Kasey Snow on a historic sketch walk around Golden. You will learn how to make plein air sketches at a variety of well-known Golden sites, as well as learn a little about the city’s history. Bring walking shoes, a sketchbook, and something to draw with.
Location and Pricing
10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
free for members; $10 non-members.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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’s Magic Mountain Archaeology: Part Two
Learn about Golden’s Magic Mountain archaeology through pre-history and history research conducted by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. This is the second part of a series that began in 2017.
Dr. Michele Koons, curator of archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, will lead the talk.
Michele will detail some of her findings such as how the early settlers lived, what they lived in, and perhaps what they ate. If we are lucky, Dr. Koons will even bring some artifacts taken from the site for attendee viewing.
Location and Pricing
5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
$0 Members (DMNS and GHMP); $10 non-members.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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 Kansas City Monarchs in Our Hometown
Most people have heard of Jackie Robinson, some have heard of Satchel Paige, and many have heard of the Kansas City Monarchs. Few know, however, how connected these men and their teams were to cities and communities all over America. The Kansas City Monarchs and their opponents changed modern sports and social history forever. Come learn about the unique history of African American baseball teams, stars, and games played in Golden. Lecture presented by author/historian Phil S. Dixon.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
free for members; $10 non-members.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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.
Holidaily Brewery Tour and Lunch
Join Golden History Museum & Park Curator, Mark Dodge, and Holidaily Brewery owner, Karen Hertz, at Golden’s first gluten-free brewery. You’ll both taste and can some of Holidaily’s famous brews and have a great lunch to boot. Must be 21 years of age or older.
Location and Pricing
Meet at Holidaily Brewery.
10 a.m. – noon
$25 members; $35 non-members
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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.
Edible Wild Plants of Colorado: What to eat when Safeway is closed
With a little bit of Edible Wild Plants knowledge and a good digging stick a resourceful person can find plenty to eat among the wild plants of Colorado. This lecture will cover the excavation and extraction of botanical remains from archaeological sites, the interpretation of the remains, and a review of some of the plants and their uses. Many of the plants discussed are common in the yards and wilderness areas of Colorado, either as our treasured flowers or as one of those nasty weeds.
Location and Pricing
5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
$0 members; $10 non-members.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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.
Colorado Experience: Paleo-Indians
Partnering with Rocky Mountain PBS, join us for a viewing and an expert-led discussion of Colorado Experience: Paleo-Indians.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Free for all.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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.
Origins of the Colorado Territory
Congress created the Colorado Territory in 1861 during a grave secession crisis that threatened the very survival of the Union. In fact, the regional and national stories are deeply intertwined, for the sectional conflict that led to the Civil War was in no small part a struggle to control the land, resources, and identity of the American West. This lecture frames Colorado’s early history as a function of both the political crisis in the East and the gold rush in the West, both of which occurred as Americans reconsidered the geography of the interior. Presented by Dr. Susan Schulten, Professor at the University of Denver.
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 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. Her current project—a history of America through one hundred maps—is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
free for members; $10 non-members.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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.
1968 – The Year of Turmoil
America is more divided today than it was at any time since the Civil War. Or is it? Martin C. Babicz, Ph.D., will look at the tumultuous year of 1968, a year in which assassinations, riots, and war nearly tore the country apart. Dr. Babicz will also explore how the United States became divided in the late 1960s and the impact that polarization had on the future.
Martin C. 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
10:30 a.m. – noon
free for members; $10 non-members.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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 2018
Visit the graves of legendary Golden characters. Hear stories about their lives from storytellers and guides, Dennis Potter and Troy Rodriquez.
Tours begin and end at the Golden Cemetery. Two tours are available: 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. or 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
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.
World War I: Making the World Safe for Democracy
Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Martin C. Babicz, Ph.D. will explore America’s role during the Great War and how the so-called “War to End All Wars” impacted life in the United States. Dr. Babicz will examine how the Wilson administration directed the war effort and managed American society to quickly and efficiently convert a nation of 100 million people into a well-organized war machine. He will also look at the turmoil that erupted in the United States following the end of the war.
Location and Pricing
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
free for members; $10 non-members.
Registration is required. Program will be canceled if minimum attendance number is not reached 24 hours prior to start time.
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.
Witness the exciting and long-anticipated opening of Golden’s 1968 time capsule, which is currently buried in front of Golden City Hall. Free admission!
Leading up to November 11, check with the Golden Public Library for your chance to add something to a 2018 time capsule.
Free for all; no registration.
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!
Here are some other Olde Golden Christmas & Holiday festivities offered by the Golden Chamber. 
Facility Rental
Learn how a Golden Museum Rental offers unique experiences that range from rustic to ritzy.