This past weekend, the Golden Fine Arts Festival took place in Golden, Colorado, after being canceled last year due to the coronavirus. The festival takes place on a street bordering the Golden Historical Park (which contains many original pioneer structures) and Clear Creek, a hotbed for river tubing. This year, there seemed to be a lot of photography on display, which made the show especially enjoyable. Golden is most famous for being the home of the Coors Brewery, although after a number of corporate moves with Molson and Miller, Golden is no longer the headquarters for the firm.
There was musical entertainment at the festival, too, including the bluegrass band seen in the photograph on the right. Golden, by the way, was founded in 1859 and was the territorial capitol of Colorado from 1862 to 1867, before political shenanigans led to the capitol being moved to Denver. I suspect some of the guys in that bluegrass band were around back when that outrage occurred. I even think they sang a song about it.
The Golden Fine Arts Festival features really high end art, but is a pretty laid back affair, as befits a place that, because it is separated from the rest of the Denver metropolitan area by two mesas, still feels like a small western town. The place is filled with houses and commercial buildings from the 1860s and 1870s. As a matter of fact, the original territorial capitol building is still around, doing business as the Old Capitol Grill and Smokehouse. The legislature used to meet upstairs, and then would head down to the bar on the first floor after their business was completed. The bar still has a glass fronted room for ladies, who were not allowed into the bar proper back then. I am pretty sure that policy has changed by now, but you never know.
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