Golden, Colorado

Golden began, like so much of the Front Range, with gold. Prospectors founded Golden City in 1859 during the Colorado Gold Rush, at the mouth of Clear Creek where the plains run up against the foothills — the last flat ground before the Rockies, and a natural outfitting stop for miners heading up the canyons. The town's position made it briefly powerful: Golden City served as capital of the provisional Territory of Jefferson, and then the official Territory of Colorado from 1862 to 1867, with the legislature meeting downtown near Washington Avenue. In 1867 the territorial capital was moved about a dozen miles east to Denver — a decision Golden residents long resented — and when Colorado became a state in 1876, Denver kept the honor for good.

Losing the capital didn't sink Golden; industry did the opposite. Clear Creek's water and the railroads turned it into a busy manufacturing town, home to smelters, brick and clay works, flour mills, a paper mill, and coal mines. Two institutions from that boom still define the place. In 1873 the German immigrant Adolph Coors and a partner founded a brewery beside Clear Creek, drawn by the clean mountain water; it grew into one of the largest single-site breweries anywhere. And in 1874 the territory took over a fledgling Episcopal school to create the Colorado School of Mines, a public university built to train mining and mineral engineers. More than 150 years later, the brewery and the school of engineers are still the two beating hearts of the town.

Modern Golden is a compact, walkable foothills city of roughly 20,000 that has kept its historic Western downtown intact. Clear Creek runs right through the middle of it, framed by the flat-topped North and South Table Mountains that rise on either side. Over Washington Avenue hangs the town's signature landmark: an illuminated arch first raised by the Chamber of Commerce in 1949, its slogan later changed to "Where the West Lives" and the structure added to the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties in 2000. As the Jefferson County seat, Golden also houses the county courthouse and assessor, making a small mountain-gateway town the civic center for one of Colorado's largest counties.

Golden feels like a real town that happens to have a whitewater creek running through its center. On a warm afternoon people tube and paddle Clear Creek right downtown, then dry off on the patios and brick sidewalks of Washington Avenue under the glowing welcome arch. The setting is the draw: North and South Table Mountains bracket the town with easy hiking and biking, and the foothills and Lookout Mountain climb straight up from the west edge for road cyclists and trail runners. It's a college town too — the Colorado School of Mines keeps the coffee shops and pizza places busy — and a brewery town, with the enormous Coors operation woven into the fabric of the place alongside a crop of smaller taprooms. Add museums, a genuinely historic Main Street, and quick access to both Denver and the mountains, and you get a small city that punches well above its size.