Golden with kids: a dinosaur dig, a 130-foot indoor slide, trains, chickens and a free rock

Golden packs a lot for children into a few blocks along Clear Creek: the City’s Community Center and its pools, Lions Park, the library and the history museum are all on 10th Street. The trains are at the Colorado Railroad Museum on West 44th Avenue, and the nature center and Buffalo Bill’s grave are up on Lookout Mountain. Hours and prices are as the operators posted them in early October 2026; the rules are worth knowing before you go.

The Community Center pools

The Golden Community Center at 1470 10th Street, just north of Lions Park, has the City’s indoor pools. The leisure pool is kept at 91 degrees and runs from zero-depth entry to 3 feet 6 inches, with a 130-foot spiral water slide, floating logs to climb across, fountains and a small slide for the youngest swimmers.

This fall the leisure pool is open from 10 am to 7:30 pm Monday to Thursday and to 6:30 pm on Friday, the first 90 minutes a sensory swim with the features off. On Saturday it runs from 7 am to 5:30 pm, with the slides on from 11:30, and on Sunday from 8 am to 3:30 pm. The slide and splash-down area close from 4 to 6:30 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays for swim lessons.

The rules: an adult in swimwear must be in the water and within arm’s reach of any child under 6, with no more than three under-6s per adult, and children of 6 and 7 need an adult at the poolside. Swim diapers are required for anyone who needs a diaper, and life jackets are there to borrow. Riders must be 48 inches tall to go down the big slide alone. The hot tub and sauna are for 14 and older, and at busy times everyone under 18 leaves the water for safety breaks.

A day pass is $6.75 for ages 6 to 17 if you live in the City and $8.25 if you do not, $4.75 and $6.50 for children 5 and under, and $8.50 and $10.25 for adults. A weekend pool party for 20 guests is $200.

Child Watch takes children from 1 to 7 while a parent stays in the building, on Tuesdays from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm and 2:30 to 4:30 pm and on Wednesday mornings, for up to two hours at $10 a visit for residents and $12 for others. On school days off, the Center’s licensed School’s Out camps take ages 5 to 12 from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm for $60 a day ($65 for non-residents): 12 and 13 October, 23 and 24 November, 21 to 23 and 28 to 30 December, and 4 and 5 January.

The Splash, in summer

The Splash at Fossil Trace, the City’s outdoor water park at 3151 Illinois Street, is closed for the season. It has a zero-depth leisure pool with a play structure and a 500-gallon tipping bucket, two big slides for riders 48 inches and taller, a lap pool with a diving board and what the City calls the biggest sandbox in Jefferson County. The City’s page still shows the 2025 season, 24 May to 17 August, and says the little splash pad is closed for construction until further notice. The supervision rules are the Community Center’s, and the park does not open on a day forecast at 65 degrees or cooler.

Playgrounds and parks

Discovery Park, at 2300 Illinois Street, is the City’s showpiece for children: a big dinosaur and an enormous brass tortoise to climb, a digging pit with dinosaur bones buried in it, a climbing wall and a grass maze. Lions Park at 1300 10th Street, built by the Lions Club in the 1960s, has a large playground with accessible slides and swings, restrooms and shaded picnic tables, and connects to the Clear Creek Trail. The City’s park list shows playgrounds at eleven more parks, among them DeLong, Golden Heights, Norman D Memorial and Ulysses.

For older children on bikes, the volunteer-maintained Golden Bike Park in Tony Grampsas Park, 4471 Salvia Street, has a jump and flow trail that splits into beginner, intermediate and advanced lines, and every feature has a way to roll around it.

City parks are open from 5 am to 11 pm, but the creek-side parks, Lions, Parfet and Vanover, close an hour after dusk; alcohol, glass and smoking are banned and dogs stay on a leash. The Clear Creek Whitewater Park is for experienced paddlers: the City says the course is unsupervised and demands paddlers who are proficient in fast, cold water.

The library

The Golden Library at 1019 10th Street, next to the history museum on the creek trail, is open 9 am to 8 pm Monday to Thursday, 9 to 5 on Friday and Saturday and noon to 5 on Sunday. Its calendar this fall runs a half-hour program most mornings at 9:15 or 10:15: Baby Time on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Toddler Time on Wednesdays and Fridays, Preschool Time on Tuesdays, Let’s Dance on Mondays and Family Time on Saturdays, each with registration and room for 38. Golden Baby Play Time, a drop-in for babies up to 2, is on the first, third and fourth Wednesdays. Discovery Play, an hour of hands-on science, technology, engineering, art and math, is on 14 October and 9 December. And on some Saturday afternoons children who can read on their own can book 15 minutes reading to a therapy dog, cat or rabbit at Paws for Reading.

Museums

The Golden History Museum at 923 10th Street is free, open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 am to 4:30 pm, and has a hands-on gallery for families with young children. Golden History Park is free from 5 am to 11 pm: 1800s ranch cabins moved from Golden Gate Canyon, an 1876 schoolhouse, a blacksmith shop and a coop of heritage chickens. On Jeffco no-school days the museum runs break programs for ages 6 to 11 from 9 am to 4 pm, at $80 a day for members and $95 for others: 12 and 13 October and a two-day survival-skills camp on 23 and 24 November.

The Mines Museum of Earth Science on the Colorado School of Mines campus, 1310 Maple Street, is free and open daily from 10 am to 4 pm. It has one of Colorado’s two Apollo 17 goodwill moon rocks, an indoor cave with minerals that glow and a trail out to authentic triceratops trackways, and children who do the family scavenger hunt earn a free rock or mineral.

The Colorado Railroad Museum has a 15-acre railyard with more than 100 locomotives, cars and cabooses, a roundhouse and a model railroad. Admission is $12 for adults, $10 for those 60 and over and $5 for ages 2 to 17, and under-2s are free; its visiting page gives the hours as 9 am to 5 pm Tuesday to Sunday, closed Mondays, while the site’s footer says open daily. The remaining regular train rides this fall are behind a diesel on Saturday 10 and 24 October and on the Galloping Goose on Sunday 11 and 25 October, every half hour from 10 am to 3 pm. On the third Tuesday of the month (20 October, 17 November, 15 December) staff read railroad stories followed by a craft, recommended for ages 4 to 6 and included with admission.

Up the mountain, the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave charges $1 for ages 6 to 17, $5 for adults, and nothing for children under 5; it is open daily from 9 to 5 through 31 October, then 10 to 5 Tuesday to Sunday from 1 November.

Outdoors

The Lookout Mountain Nature Center at 910 Colorow Road is open from 10 am to 4 pm Friday to Monday and closed Tuesday to Thursday. Jeffco Open Space says children enjoy its hands-on play room and observation room, and its naturalist programs are free; the 110-acre preserve’s trails are for hikers only. Its free Preschool Nature Nuts programs are for ages 3 to 5 with an adult, by registration.

On South Table Mountain, the 1.5-mile T. rex Tooth Trail makes a loop of about 3 miles with the Fossil, Old Quarry and Basalt Cap Loop trails.

This fall and winter

• Halloween. The railroad museum’s Harvest Haunt Express runs steam trains and costume trick-or-treating on 17 and 18 October, $7 for ages 2 to 17 online and $12 at the gate; the Mines museum’s free Spooktacular is on 17 October from 2 to 5 pm. Jeffco Open Space’s free Boo-Logical Adaptations Night Hike at Lookout Mountain on 23 October is for all ages with an adult, by registration. Trick or Treat Street fills Washington Avenue on 30 October from 3 to 5 pm, by the City’s calendar, and on Halloween afternoon the free Monster Mash sends young trick-or-treaters between the library, the history museum and park and Foothills Art Center: 2 to 4 pm by the library and the City, 3 to 4:30 pm by the museum.
• The Polar Express. The railroad museum’s Polar Express runs from 6 November to 23 December, three shows an evening; standard seats are $80 for ages 2 to 15 and $100 for 16 and up, and lap riders under 2 are free. The museum says it has sold out quickly in past years.
• December downtown. The Candlelight Walk down Washington Avenue on 4 December ends with Santa switching on the lights in Parfet Park, and Jingle on the Avenue on 19 December brings holiday characters, music and Newfoundland dog cart rides, by the City’s calendar.