To the east stands Castle Rock, which is an outcropping of South Table Mountain. It is a frequently used symbol of Golden appearing on the city flag, as well as being an icon of the Coors Brewery for many years.
The top of Castle Rock was a popular tourist spot in the early 1900s. In 1908 a cafe and dance hall were built on the summit overlooking the city. Originally guests rented burros to ride up the hill. But in 1913 a funicular railway was built to carry revelers to the summit in comfort. The funicular and the pavilion were closed in 1919 as travel by automobile became popular. The scar where the tracks ran is still visible below Castle Rock.
In 1874, Peter Dobson, a student at Jarvis Hall (later part of the Colorado School of Mines) found a strange fossilized tooth on South Table Mountain. His geology teacher, Arthur Lakes, arranged to have the tooth sent to O. A. Marsh, a paleontologist at Yale University. The tooth was forgotten in the Yale collection until 2000, when it was identified as the tooth of a Tyrannosaurus rex. T-rex was not discovered and identified elsewhere until 1905.
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