Denver metro · County guide
Jefferson County
Golden held the territorial capital before Denver took it, and in 1972 Jeffco became the first county to tax itself for open space.
Where it is
Jefferson County is the western wall of the Denver metro area. Its general boundaries run from about West 120th Avenue in Westminster on the north to Sheridan Boulevard on the east and the Pike National Forest on the south, then west into the mountains to the Gilpin, Clear Creek and Park county lines. Of its 773 square miles the county counts 557 as mountain terrain and 217 as plains, so the shape is a narrow strip of built-out suburb pinned against a much larger block of foothills.
Boulder and Broomfield counties to the north, Adams, Denver, Arapahoe and Douglas counties to the east, Park County to the south and southwest, and Gilpin and Clear Creek counties to the west.
- From downtown Denver
- 15 to 25 minutes west to Lakewood, Wheat Ridge and Arvada, about 30 minutes to Golden on US 6, and 45 minutes to an hour up to Evergreen and Conifer
- Elevation
- About 5,300 feet where Clear Creek crosses Sheridan Boulevard at the eastern edge, 6,450 feet at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 9,708 feet at Bergen Peak in Elk Meadow Park, and past 10,000 feet on the granite cliffs in Staunton State Park.
What makes it different
Six things that are true here and not one county over.
The 1972 open space tax
PLAN Jeffco and the League of Women Voters took a half of one percent sales tax to the ballot, and on November 7, 1972 county voters approved it. Jeffco Open Space became the first county preservation program in the nation funded by its own sales tax. The idea started in Carol Karlin's Lakewood living room in 1971, and an overlook in Elk Meadow Park above Evergreen now carries her name. The tax raised roughly a million dollars a year at the start and now brings in about seventy million. The program has preserved more than 58,000 acres and runs 27 open space parks and over 275 miles of trails.
Golden, capital then county seat
Golden City was laid out in June 1859 at the mouth of Clear Creek Canyon, not as a mining camp but as the supply and wagon depot for miners heading into the mountains. It served as capital of Colorado Territory from 1862 to 1867, when the legislature moved the seat of government to Denver, which kept it through statehood in 1876. Golden dropped the word City from its name in 1872 and held the county seat. The arch over Washington Avenue still reads Howdy, Folks! Welcome to Golden. The Jefferson County Administration and Courts Facility, 531,000 square feet under a 125-foot glass dome, stands at 6th Avenue and Jefferson County Parkway.
Coors and the Clear Creek trades
On November 14, 1873 Adolph Coors and his partner Jacob Schueler bought the abandoned Golden City tannery and turned it into a brewery. Coors bought Schueler out in 1880. The company branched into porcelain and ceramics, which carried it through Prohibition, and the Golden plant is now the largest single-site brewery in the world. It was never the only industry on the creek. By the 1870s Golden also held a cigar factory, a glass plant, a paper mill, flour mills, stone quarries, several smelters and coal mines. Ten county coal mines were producing 45,000 tons a year by 1880, and an 1889 flood in the White Ash Mine, on what is now the Mines campus, killed ten workers.
A campus and three federal payrolls
Bishop George Randall opened Jarvis Hall south of Golden in 1869 and pushed for a mining school. Governor Routt signed the territorial act on February 9, 1874, classes began that September 15 at $55 a session, and statehood made it a state institution in 1876. Colorado School of Mines now enrolls 8,058 degree-seeking students at 1500 Illinois Street. The US Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center has worked out of Golden since 1974 and publishes roughly 30,000 earthquake locations a year. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory adds about 1,720 jobs, and the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood is the largest single compound of federal agencies outside Washington.
Rocky Flats, plant and refuge
Construction began northwest of Arvada in 1951, and from 1952 to 1989 the plant made plutonium triggers for US nuclear weapons. Fires in 1957 and 1969 released contamination. The FBI and EPA raided it on June 6, 1989, and the operator pleaded guilty in 1992 to violations of federal environmental law, with an $18.5 million fine. Cleanup finished in 2005 and reached regulatory closure in 2006, with Colorado's health department still overseeing monitoring of the central area. Congress passed the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge Act in 2001, the former buffer land transferred to the Fish and Wildlife Service in July 2007, and 5,237 acres opened to the public with about ten miles of trails on September 15, 2018. Community groups sued over that trail decision, and the Tenth Circuit ruled against them on July 19, 2022.
Red Rocks belongs to Denver
The amphitheatre stands in Jefferson County, but the City and County of Denver owns and runs it. John Brisben Walker staged concerts in the rocks between 1906 and 1910, and Denver bought 675 acres from him in 1927 for $50,000. The Civilian Conservation Corps built Burnham Hoyt's design between 1935 and 1941, and it was dedicated on June 15, 1941. The venue seats 9,525 at 6,450 feet and became a National Historic Landmark in 2015. It is one piece of Denver Mountain Parks, a system of 14,000 acres, 22 parks and 24 conservation areas spread across three counties. Genesee Park, established in 1912 at 2,413 acres, has held a city bison herd since 1914.
How it got here
- 1858-1859
Arapahoe City was established on November 29, 1858 as the county's first non-Native settlement, and Golden City followed in June 1859 at the entrance to Clear Creek Canyon. That same year David Wall dug the county's first irrigation ditch off Clear Creek, farms went in on what became Wheat Ridge, and a settlement on Ralston Creek took the name of Lewis Ralston, who had found gold there in 1850.
- 1861
The Colorado Territorial Legislature created Jefferson County in November 1861 as one of the territory's original seventeen counties, named it for Thomas Jefferson, and seated it at Golden City. The name carried over from the self-declared Territory of Jefferson that Front Range settlers had organized in 1859 without federal recognition.
- 1862-1867
Golden City served as capital of Colorado Territory. It argued that it spoke for the mining districts while Denver claimed to broker the whole territory. In 1867 the legislature moved the seat of government permanently to Denver, which kept it through statehood in 1876. Golden dropped City from its name in 1872 and held on to the county seat.
- 1873-1874
Adolph Coors and Jacob Schueler bought the Golden City tannery on November 14, 1873 and converted it to a brewery. Three months later, on February 9, 1874, Governor Routt signed the act creating the Territorial School of Mines at Golden. The first classes met on September 15, 1874.
- 1877
Arthur Lakes, a deacon teaching drawing and geology at Jarvis Hall, was hunting plant fossils on the hogback above Morrison when he found fossilized dinosaur bones. He shipped samples to Yale's Peabody Museum and set off a rush of paleontologists to the county. Apatosaurus and Stegosaurus, now Colorado's state fossil, came out of that ridge, which is why it is called Dinosaur Ridge.
- 1927-1941
Denver bought 675 acres of red sandstone at Morrison from John Brisben Walker for $50,000. The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration then built the amphitheatre to Burnham Hoyt's design, taking five years rather than the two estimated, at a cost of $115,881 in materials and $357,281 in labor. Red Rocks was dedicated on June 15, 1941.
- 1941-1945
The Denver Ordnance Plant went up on 2,080 acres along Kipling Street, creating some 8,000 construction jobs and nearly 20,000 plant jobs in what was still farm country. The plant closed with the war, and the General Services Administration kept 690 acres of it as the Denver Federal Center. Jefferson County went from 35,000 residents in 1940 to 127,000 by 1960.
- 1951-1992
The Atomic Energy Commission built Rocky Flats northwest of Arvada, and the plant ran until 1992, employing about 5,000 people at its height. A federal raid in 1989 ended production, and the operator pleaded guilty in 1992 to violations of federal environmental law. Cleanup demolished more than 800 structures and removed 21 tons of weapons-grade material before regulatory closure in 2006.
- 1969-1972
Lakewood incorporated in 1969, briefly under the name Jefferson City, and became one of Colorado's largest cities overnight. Wheat Ridge incorporated the same year, on August 15. Three years later, on November 7, 1972, county voters approved a half of one percent sales tax for open space, the first county program of its kind in the country funded that way.
The towns inside it
What the housing looks like
The oldest fabric is in Golden, where a grid of 1860s to 1890s brick and frame houses runs between Clear Creek and the two mesas, behind masonry commercial blocks on Washington Avenue. Arvada protects three districts: Olde Town, the Reno Park Addition where most buildings date to the 1800s, and the Stocke-Walter Addition, platted in 1904 and 1920, wood-framed cottages and bungalows with Queen Anne detail on the larger Grandview Avenue lots that still read as farm parcels. Wheat Ridge grew out of 1859 truck farms and carnation greenhouses, so its brick ranches sit on unusually deep lots. Lakewood is the postwar block. Its arterials, Kipling and Wadsworth among them, were spaced to five and ten acre farms, and the fields between them filled with ranches and split-levels once the Denver Ordnance Plant and the Federal Center brought work, then filled again after Denver Water dropped its Blue Line in 1961 and opened Green Mountain to service. Villa Italia mall arrived in 1965 and came down in 2002 for the Belmar street grid. West of the hogback, the mountain half of the county is cabins, A-frames and custom houses on private wells and onsite wastewater systems, and because Colorado sets no quality standard for private well water, testing falls to the owner. The 1990s and 2000s added stucco and stone-veneer subdivisions on curved loops and cul-de-sacs across west Arvada and the south end of the county, platted hard against the open space boundaries the 1972 tax had drawn.
The events board
Community events that come back every year. Each card links to the organiser for this year's exact date.
Colorado Environmental Film Festival
Late February, across three days from Thursday to Saturday
Green Center, Colorado School of Mines, 924 16th Street, Golden
Three days of documentary and short-film screenings on environment, land, water, wildlife and energy, held in the Green Center on the Colorado School of Mines campus. The building's 1,400-seat Bunker Auditorium and its reception halls carry parallel programs, so several screenings run at once and filmmakers introduce their own work and take questions afterward. Tickets are sold as a full pass or by individual session, and the festival is run by a Golden nonprofit.
Arvada Kite Festival
The second Sunday of April, late morning through late afternoon
Stenger Sports Complex, 58th Avenue and Quail Street, Arvada
The City of Arvada's largest event, run by its Festivals Commission on the open turf at Stenger. The Rocky Mountain Kite Association flies demonstration kites, more than a hundred vendor booths and a row of food trucks line the field, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science brings its Discovery Station. Face painting and inflatables run through the afternoon, and the Majestic View Nature Center holds make-a-kite classes on the Friday and Saturday beforehand. Bring a kite or buy one there.
Evergreen Rodeo
Father's Day weekend, with a kickoff Friday night, the parade Saturday morning, and performances Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon
Evergreen Rodeo Grounds, 29831 Stagecoach Boulevard, Evergreen
A Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association sanctioned rodeo run entirely by volunteers on the grounds off Stagecoach Boulevard. Gates open three hours before each performance and seating is general admission. The Saturday morning parade starts at ten and works down Main Street through downtown Evergreen, finishing around half past twelve near Meadow Drive and State Highway 74. The Evergreen Rodeo Association, a volunteer nonprofit, puts on the whole weekend.
Buffalo Bill Days
The last full weekend of July, Friday through Sunday, with the parade up Washington Avenue on Saturday morning
Parfet Park, 10th Street and Washington Avenue, downtown Golden
Three days centered on Parfet Park in downtown Golden, grown out of a 1940s memorial trail ride to Cody's grave on Lookout Mountain. Saturday opens with a pancake breakfast and a parade up Washington Avenue. More than a hundred arts and crafts vendors set up in and around the park, alongside food stalls, a beer garden, children's activities and live music across the weekend. Attending costs nothing, and free shuttles run because downtown parking is limited.
Golden Fine Arts Festival
Mid-August, Saturday and Sunday
Parfet Park and the surrounding streets, 10th Street and Washington Avenue, downtown Golden
A juried outdoor art show run by the Golden Chamber of Commerce and limited to just over a hundred artist booths, set along the streets around Parfet Park. Painting, sculpture, ceramics, glass, jewelry, photography and printmaking are all represented, and the artists sell directly from their own booths rather than through galleries. The show fills both days of the weekend in the blocks between Clear Creek and Washington Avenue, and admission costs nothing.
Wheat Ridge Carnation Festival
The second weekend of August, Friday through Sunday, with the parade Saturday morning
Anderson Park, 4355 Field Street, Wheat Ridge
Wheat Ridge marks its 1969 incorporation with three days in Anderson Park: fifteen bands, a carnival with unlimited-ride wristbands, a juried fine arts show, a car show, a vendor fair, a beer garden, and fireworks on both Friday and Saturday nights. Specialty food events include a spaghetti dinner and a chili cook-off. The Saturday parade runs 38th Avenue between Sheridan and Wadsworth from nine to noon. A volunteer nonprofit runs it and admission costs nothing.
Day Out With Thomas at the Colorado Railroad Museum
Three consecutive weekends in September, Saturday and Sunday
Colorado Railroad Museum, 17155 W. 44th Avenue, Golden
The Colorado Railroad Museum gives over three consecutive September weekends to its Thomas the Tank Engine event on the fifteen-acre railyard on West 44th Avenue. Train rides are the centerpiece, and ticket holders also get the run of a yard holding more than a hundred locomotives and cars, a replica 1880s narrow gauge depot built by the museum's founder, and the rare Galloping Goose motor cars. Tickets are timed and sold in advance.
Pumpkin Festival at Chatfield Farms
The second weekend of October, Friday through Sunday, with last entry in the late afternoon
Denver Botanic Gardens Chatfield Farms, 8500 W. Deer Creek Canyon Road, Littleton
Denver Botanic Gardens opens its Chatfield Farms site at the mouth of Deer Creek Canyon for three days of harvest activity: a ten-acre pumpkin patch you pick from yourself, a corn maze, and children's activities across the farm and its historic homestead buildings. Pumpkins are priced by size and have recently averaged about eight dollars. Entry is by timed ticket bought online in advance, nothing is sold at the gate, and last entry is four o'clock.
Golden Candlelight Walk
The first Friday evening of December, starting in the early evening
Washington Avenue from 15th Street to Parfet Park, downtown Golden
Golden opens its holiday season with a candlelit procession down Washington Avenue from 15th Street, carols sung along the way, and shops staying open with cider and cocoa. A thirty-minute performance follows in Parfet Park, and Santa then switches on the city's 45,000 holiday lights. Battery candles are sold in the shops beforehand and wax candles for a dollar or two on the night. A free shuttle runs from the Splash lot through the evening.
Checked 2026-08-03 against county and city sources: jeffco.us · jeffco.us · jeffco.us · jeffco.us · jeffco.us · jeffco.us · jeffco.us · jeffco.us · jeffco.us · digitalarchives.jeffco.us · planjeffco.org · mines.edu · libguides.mines.edu · mines.edu. Event dates move a week either way from year to year, so each card links to the organiser rather than printing a date that will be wrong by next spring.
Thinking about Jeffco?
The county runs from the plains at Sheridan Boulevard to 11,000 feet, and well, septic and access change everything above the hogback. I can walk you through it.
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