Travel to Arvada - Colorado - USA - History

Arvada - Colorado - History

Arvada in th 19th Century. The history of Arvada begins with the discovery of gold on June 22, 1850. A wagon train of prospectors, bound for California, crossed the Platte River just north of the confluence with Clear Creek, and followed Clear Creek west for six miles. The members of the wagon train rested for a day, and Lewis Ralston dipped his gold pan in an unnamed mountain stream. He found almost $5 worth of gold in his first pan. The stream was later named Ralston Creek in his honour. This was the first gold discovery in Colorado, and one of the most significant events in Colorado history. At the time the find was not considered significant and the party continued on to the California goldfields.

In 1858, Ralston accompanied another group of prospectors back to the site of his 1850 discovery. Again, gold was panned from the stream in small amounts. Ralston became discouraged and soon quit the area, but the rest of the group continued prospecting and discovered richer diggings upstream along the South Platte. Early in 1859 rich strikes were discovered in the mountains along the upper reaches of Clear Creek and the Colorado gold rush began.

On December 1, 1870, soon after the construction of a railroad near the settlement, and six years before Colorado would achieve statehood, legal notice was posted for the new Town of Arvada. Benjamin F. Wadsworth and Louis A. Reno filed a town plat, and Wadsworth's wife, Mary, named the new town in honor of her brother-in-law, Hiram Arvada Haskin.

Trains of the Colorado Central Railroad passed through the Arvada village twice a day. At first they only slowed so the mail sack could be tossed to Wadsworth, the postmaster. By 1872, passengers could board the train on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to travel east to Denver or west into the mountains as far as Black Hawk.

On August 24, 1904 the Town of Arvada was officially incorporated. Grandview Avenue (known then as Railroad Street) became a thriving business area. There was a livery stable, a feed store, a blacksmith, a threshing operation, a tannery, a shoemaker, a dry goods store, a cigar store, a grocery store, and a lumbar yard. Arvada's economy surged with the 1906 opening of a brickyard, employing more than 40 men, on Carr Hill just north of the railroad tracks. The Arvada Enterprise newspaper published its first edition on July 3, 1908. On December 4, 1913, the biggest blizzard of the century hit the area. It snowed for three days, and Arvada was buried under four feet of snow. During the storm, a resident walked to the school and by making three trips, carried all of the children on his back to his house, a quarter of a mile away, where they stayed until the storm cleared.

Arvada felt the blow of the stock market crash on October 29, 1929 and struggled through the Depression years of the 1930s. In 1935, Arvada was hit by devastating dust storms that marked the Dust Bowl era. One resident who lived through the storms described it this way; "Out on the prairie the ploughed earth was carried high into the sky, blocking out the sun. From time to time we could see dust in the sky over Arvada as strong winds blew it in against the mountains. Then in the middle of April, Arvada was cloaked in a stinging, biting strangulation of dust. A bright, sunny day was suddenly tuned into dusk as it hung, like an eerie spectre, over the fields and fences of Arvada. For four days, the air was filled with dust, when at last a wet snow fell to clear up the atmosphere. In May, a rain storm and dust storm collided over Arvada,
and it rained mud."

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