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History, anecdotes
lie behind the graves of
interesting people who built Golden
November 2, 1989
by Jill Jamieson-Nichols
Transcript writer
Behind the gravestones at Golden
Cemetery are interesting, often colorful stories of
the men and women who built Golden.
The cemetery is a silent reminder of the
characters who found their ways to the West in
search of gold or homesteads or who had a hand in
turning Golden City into the Golden of today.
Take John C. Vivian, a Colorado governor
from 1887 to 1964. He is remembered for one of the
longest inaugural addresses on record, also as "a
good, solid governor." "He was sometimes called
the Calvin Coolidge of Colorado," according to Anna
Dethmers, a member of the Zonta Club of Lakewood and
Golden. What many people didn't know about Vivian
until his second term, though, was that he was a
poet, producing prose published under a pen name in
the Chicago Tribune and other Eastern newspapers.
It was one secret he had hoped to keep
from the press. "Most of his press conferences
consisted of 'No comment,''' Dethmers said.
... In his later years, a University of
Denver Law School graduate named Berthod traveled
to Golden from Kansas by wagon with his wife, Helen,
arriving in 1860. The town and tunnel derive their
names from him. Born in Switzerland, Berthoud was a
member of the first Colorado School of Mines
faculty. 'He was a mayor of Golden and published the
first history of Jefferson County.
Helen Berthoud was the daughter of John
Ferrell, who built the first toll bridge across
Clear Creek on Washington Avenue. Berthoud surveyed
a road between Golden and Salt Lake City for W.A.H.
Loveland, who later proposed it as a
transcontinental railroad route, a proposal that
"didn't happen," said local historian JoAnn
Thistlewood.
Berthoud was said to have a great fear
of being buried alive and requested his body be held
for seven days after his death. That did happen.
Among those erecting a monument at his graveside was
his good friend, Adolph Coors.
Gertrude Bell: Bell Junior High School
is named for the woman who taught at the first
school in Golden, beginning in 1860, and in log
schoolhouses throughout the area. Initially, she
made $30 a month, $20 of which went for room and
board. During her last year of teaching, she lost
her vision.
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