A massive redevelopment project in the heart of Golden is bringing fragments of Colorado’s past to the surface. Coors used to operate a ceramics plant on the property, and shards of century-old vessels appear by the minute.
“That is blue! This is part of our rosebud pottery,” Darden Coors called out as she sifted through dirt at the construction site.
“I think these moments capture the imagination of who was here before, both my ancestors, but also the thousands of employees who’ve been on this site manufacturing for a hundred years.”
In downtown Golden, Coors once made hand-painted household china as well as glass bottles for everything from soda to pickles to its own beer. This site and the surrounding acreage are becoming the Clayworks district, which will include housing, retail, and office space.
“A manufacturing site in the middle of this beautiful, engaging, lively college town … it’s not the best use,” Darden, who’s a 5th-generation Coors, said.
While Coors no longer makes creamers and casserole dishes, it is still in the ceramics business through CoorsTek, whose new headquarters are under construction here. Modern applications include energy, aerospace, and medicine.
Coors archivist and historian Melanie Keerins hopes to display the history being unearthed at Clayworks, which, overall, is a 10-year, $600 million project. Such a display is likely to include remnants of malted milk canisters, “which would have been used during Prohibition,” Keerins explained. “They had to switch gears. They sold malted milk to the Mars Candy Company.”
What is surfacing never made it onto store shelves or into laboratories, perhaps because it was flawed in some way and was destined instead for recycling or the trash heap. And not everything will be salvaged.
“There’s not time for that or manpower for that,” Keerins said. “I am just one person, but whenever crews do find something, people do set it aside, and it gets to me. Everybody is really involved in saving our history.”
Asked what her beer-making forebear Adolph would think of the project underway at 9th Street and Washington Avenue in Golden, Darden Coors replied, “He could not have imagined what he started, as a little brewery 150 years ago, would become today. But I think he was an innovative, creative person and I think he’d be super proud and super excited.”
