Arvada, Colorado

In June of eighteen fifty, Lewis Ralston panned the first documented gold from Clear Creek, right here at the edge of what would become Arvada. He continued on to California but returned in eighteen fifty-eight guiding a fresh wave of prospectors back to the same stream. By eighteen sixty more than thirty land claims had been filed in the Ralston and Clear Creek valley, and men who came for gold stayed to farm.

Wheat, corn, melons, and celery proved more reliable than placer dust. The townsite was platted in eighteen seventy when the Colorado Central Railroad arrived, and residents named it Arvada after Arvada Haskin, the brother-in-law of one of the founders. Today Arvada is a Denver suburb of more than a hundred and twenty thousand people, but its downtown Olde Town district preserves the bones of that farming and railroad community.