This Week in Colorado History: High School Athletics, National Parks, and Macabre Profit

The athletes of Golden High School decided to improve their athletics by hiring an official athletic director this year in 1915, reported “The Colorado Transcript.” The more than fifty athletes (all boys as Title IX was still nearly sixty years away) heatedly discussed how to improve their athletic fortunes and concluded an official director was necessary. Funding for the new position was to come from the baseball team relinquishing their $75 sweaters. The athletes hoped to be able to compete against other Colorado high schools and raise their profile as a Golden sporting group relative to Mines.

This month in 1915, “The Rocky Mountain National park was dedicated to the people of all the world for all time.” Leaders from around the state took in the opening exercises for the park despite a slight drizzle. Enos A. Mills told of his efforts “to keep the land of Colorado magic inviolate for generations to come,” and as he did so the drizzle turned to a solid rain. S.T. Mather, the Secretary of the Interior’s assistant, explained plans for the park’s future after Mills spoke. It continued to rain. The rain continued as Governor George A. Carlson spoke, but near the end of his speech “the clouds parted as if by the action of some mighty, unseen hand, and the sun of Colorado broke forth in rain-tinged splendor from across the newly laid snow on Longs’ peak,” reported “The Colorado Transcript.”

One man’s sharp memory earned him thirteen dollars this week in 1916. Albert Belgin of Arvada read a report searching for a woman whose husband had died in Colorado fifteen years previous. Belgin had known the couple and recalled that she had pre-deceased him. He also recalled that the dead husband Captain Farrand owed him thirteen dollars, which he was able to collect from the estate.