The W Line: Golden to Red Rocks College

It would have been... aesthetic, to start a new line in January. There are twelve stations on the W Line and that would have given me a hike each month, but reality doesn't lend itself to that kind of conformity, so I guess I'll just have to take things as they come.

In this series of statIon-to-station hikes, I plan to work my way from Golden, Colorado back to the Auraria West Station in downtown Denver. It's all urban and the last link is industrial.

April 12, I walked from the terminus of the W Line, Golden Station to Red Rocks Community College Station. There is no trail so I had to do some road work, east on Mount Vernon road, then Golden Road, and south on Indiana Street to the service road to the light rail station. 

The W Line from Denver passes through some industrial areas into residential neighborhoods, giving me a preview of hikes to come. Several large government complexes also lay along the route. The western end passes through the foothills between Green Mountain and the Tables Mountains.

These foothills are the immediate deposits washed out of the rising Colorado uplift as it rose. They give the area east of the Front Range an undulating appearance.

The train veers slightly near Red Rocks Community College, passes under the Golden Government Center parking lot, and stops at Golden Station, the western terminus of the RTD light rail system.

I've been here before (http://adventuringbcc.blogspot.com/2018/12/terminus-golden-i-took-first-e-line.html) and I expect to return due to the geological richness of the area.

But this was more of a site seeing tour and my first planned destination was the beautiful, modern Jeffco Government Center just northwest of the terminal.

The complex is a sprawling collection of modernist office buildings and court rooms around a high rotunda that houses the lobby. There is a cafeteria that provides devices to the government center and visitors but I brought my own lunch. The west side looks out on gardens and some great views of the surrounding mountains.

Lookout Mountain is the one just south of Golden. The city is situated in the canyon cut by Clear Creek and is surrounded by mountains of the Front Range to the south and west and by the two Table Mountains and Green Mountain to the north and east.

I was under the (mistaken) impression that the the Table Mountains were the exposed insides of an ancient volcano (like Bear Butte - the Devil's Tower of Close Encounters fame) but this hike brought me closer and it doesn't look like the neck of a volcano. The basalt doesn't extend from the top of the mountains down to the valley below. It's just on top, underlain by what looks like sedimentary rock - maybe sandstone or conglomerate. 

"Castle Rock" at the western end of South Table Mountain.

So I looked it up. These hills are made up of rock of the Denver formation, sedimentary rocks of andesitic volcanic origen that underlies most of the Denver area, topped by at least two lava flows. The actual volcano was about four miles to the northwest. And, of course, that means that the sedimentary rocks are older than the lava flows and the canyon is younger than both. (Nicolas Steno worked out how to tell the relative ages of rocks in the 1600s. Rocks from top to bottom are youngest to oldest. Rocks are originally laid down horizontally. And rocks (and canyons) that cut across other rocks are younger than the other rocks.)

South Table Mountain

There are parks around and on top of the Table Mountains, so I'll probably be coming back for a closer look.

In the lobby of the Jeffco County Building sits a statue of the man the county is named after.

Statue of Thomas Jefferson.

Down the hill from the government center is the Golden Cemetery. I like cemeteries and a plaque at the office of this one explains why.

I saw graves dated into the 1800s which is about the era that the Denver area was settled.

I didn't have that much time to wander around amongst the graves and was soon on Mount Vernon road headed to the Northeast.

Mount Vernon is mostly residential but I got some good views of South Table Mountain. Golden Road and Indiana Street are mostly commercial with a few restaurants and bars. There is a military base and prison on Golden Road.

The frontage road from Indiana Street to Red Rocks Community College is hilly and affords some nice views to the north. I saw this fellow in a small park in one of the residential neighborhoods.

The whole hike was about three and a half miles (five and a half kilometers) and the weather was nice. There's a lot in the Golden area and I plan to return, especially since I'm focusing on geology now. Golden has the School of Mines with it's natural history museum and several geological parks.