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.
Suing for Freedom: Slavery and the Law in Early America
Honor Sachs
During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, enslaved people challenged their status in court. They devised legal strategies, studied law, and worked with lawyers to gain freedom in jurisdictions throughout the colonial era and early national republic. This presentation by Dr. Honor Sachs follows the story of one extended slave family in Virginia who initiated dozens of freedom suits over multiple generations between the American Revolution and the 1820s, claiming freedom by reason of Native American descent. Although this family worked with some of the nation’s most famous lawyers – including Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall – their story has remained largely unknown. This talk reveals hidden stories about slavery, law, and family in early America.
Honor Sachs is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of Home Rule: Households, Manhood, and National Expansion on the Eighteenth-Century Kentucky Frontier (2015.) Her teaching covers early America broadly, with particular focus on the revolutionary and founding eras, histories of race and slavery, legal and constitutional history, and histories of family, genealogy, and memory.
 |
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.
Pikes Peak: On Common Ground
Mark James
On July 14, 1820 Edwin James performed the first documented climb to the summit of Pikes Peak. July 14, 2020 will mark the bicentennial year of Edwin’s achievement. Mark James is Edwin’s ancestor. The common ground in the title is based, not on ancestral provenance, but on hiking and standing on the summit of Pikes Peak exactly 200 years after Edwin. Mark has been photographing Pikes Peak and the surrounding area to create a timeless, unspoiled landscape likely encountered by Edwin James and the Major Stephen H. Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountain West. In this program you will relive the adventure of Edwin James and the Major Long Expedition through story and photographs.
Photographing in black and white, Mark uses a pinhole camera which produces a soft and ethereal image. The photographs avoid mere documentary. Rather, the photographs erase the fine details of the landscape while leaving behind form and light. Mark James has been a photographer for over 50 years. He has served as a photojournalist, documentarian, commercial photographer, gallery owner, curator, landscape photographer, and presently, an emerging historian. Since 1995, Mark’s landscape photography has been closely associated with the underlying ideas of photography as well as the history of American Western expansion. In 1995, Mark was awarded a residency at Rocky Mountain National Park and thus began his present field of study: black & white landscape photography using a pinhole camera – a study that has spanned twenty-four years. Mark exhibits almost exclusively in museums. Currently, an exhibit titled Remnants of the West: Edward Curtis and Mark James was curated by the Dubuque Museum of Art and is on tour. Twenty photographs from Mark James are paired with twenty photographs of the legendary photographer, Edwin Curtis.
 |  | |
 |  |
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.
From Beets to Bayonets: Colorado’s War on Migrant Labor
In the early twentieth century, Colorado led the nation in sugar production, thanks to beets harvested by migrant workers across the state. During the Great Depression, however, some state officials felt that jobs in Colorado should be held by Coloradans rather than outsiders from other states or countries. A campaign to rid the state of migrant workers, predominantly Hispanic, included talk of a state-run concentration camp near Golden and culminated in a blockade of the state boundary with New Mexico. The bitter and often vicious effort failed, but it exposed cultural and economic divisions in Colorado that resonate nearly a century later. Join Dr. Derek R. Everett of MSU-Denver and Colorado State University to explore the Depression-era war against ethnic migrant labor in Colorado, why it failed, and what lessons it offers for today and tomorrow.
Dr. Derek R. Everett, a Colorado native who grew up in Arvada, 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.
 |  Edwin C. Johnson, Colorado’s Governor, 1933-1937 and 1955-1957. | |
 |  |
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.
Hand-made apple head dolls by Vina Ramstetter. © Scott Dressel-Martin
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: Dolls
- Saturday, March 21 @ 10:30 am
- Golden History Museum
- Registration required
- Free for members; $5 + fee for non-members (per child)
- Focus on different forms of dolls inspired by the apple-head dolls in Legendary People. You’ll have a chance to make a clothespin doll before receiving your final “past-port” stamp of the series!
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.
The Dairy Route Through Golden: A look at how ten dollar milk cows gave us sugar bowls, cream caps, soda fountains and mozzarella cheese
Ever wondered what makes cheese so Gouda? Have you ever wanted a shred of knowledge about utterly interesting dairy facts? Learn about Golden’s dairy history from our local historian, Dennis Potter. Partnering with Cheese Ranch owner Rich Nichols, Rich will bring a current day look at how cheese is made and used in a host of foods including Italian. Yes, cheese samples will be provided- and how can you be blue when there’s cheese around?
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.
Wharf Rats from New Orleans
On May 3, 1855, three mercenaries known as the Immortals, and identified as Edward Chinn, Mark Taylor, and Edgar Vanover, boarded a ship in San Francisco and sailed under the command of William Walker to Nicaragua. The hired guns gave battle to the Nicaraguan nationalistic troops at Rivas and for a short time opened the South American country to slavery. The victory at Rivas was ill conceived, poorly led, and the Immortals were lucky to escape Nicaragua with their lives. Rumors abounded in California that they swam back to the States. Other rumors circulated that they rode stolen horses from California to their destination of Golden City, 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.
 San Francisco |
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.
What are we really arguing about? Environmentalism in the 21st Century
Sandy Woodson
Climate change has emerged as the central environmental problem facing humanity in the 21st century. According to NASA, 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is occurring. There are daily news items featuring truly stunning facts about hurricanes, melting glaciers, increased turbulence during trans-Atlantic flights, etc. Many Americans, however, remain unpersuaded or even infuriated by this barrage of bad news. This lecture uses philosophical tools to unpack the competing claims that surround environmental issues, and to provide new ways of looking at the arguments that continue to pit us against each other.
Sandy Woodson teaches ethics and environmental philosophy at the Colorado School of Mines. She holds degrees from North Carolina State University, Colorado State University, and the University of Montana. She has been teaching at Mines since 1999.
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.
Homestead Open House
Golden History Park, adjacent to downtown Golden, is always free to visit, but we’ve created a series of open houses to allow you to experience 1800s homesteading life on summer Saturdays.
Activities
Our fun, volunteer-led activities may include:
· woodstove cooking
· cabin exploration
· schoolhouse lesson
· blacksmithing
This event is drop-in style; there is no registration. Come any time between 10 am and 2 pm.
Each event will be unique based on how many and which volunteers are available to interpret their craft. We reserve the right to cancel any occurrence with short notice based on unforeseen circumstances.
The History Park is home to many of the original buildings from the old Pearce Ranch in Golden Gate Canyon. 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.
RESCHEDULED FROM 2019
Viva Los Americanos! Colorado Volunteer Infantry in the Philippines, 1898-1899
Viva los Americanos looks at the adventures, trials and tribulations of the First Colorado Volunteers who fought in the Philippines in the Spanish American War. Follow the 1898-1899 exploits of the First Colorado as they travel from Denver to Manila to first fight the Spanish and then later the Filipinos. Get to know such Colorado characters as Dr. Rose Kidd Beere, Sgt. Dick Holmes, and Colonel Henry McCoy.
Presenter Geoff Hunt earned his Bachelors of Arts in History at the University of Wyoming, Masters of Arts in Museum Studies at Cooperstown, NY, and Ph.D. in History from the University of Colorado Boulder. Hunt was the Founding Director of Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum, and just retired after 22 years as Professor of History at the Community College of Aurora.
Location and Pricing
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.