In 1907, Mines sought to cement its stellar reputation as the world's best mining school by going where no such school had gone before.  That year it started drilling the Experimental Mine on the southeast flank of Mt. Zion.  At the mouth of the mine SSM built a completely equipped shop building including a blacksmithing outfit for drills, and a compressed air pipeline.  A 3-wire electric transmission line was strung up the mountain from the Power House to power the mine.  Regular shifts were assigned to different squads of students, providing valuable hands-on education towards becoming proficient in mining methods and machinery.  By the time Mines took over the historic Edgar gold mine at Idaho Springs for its new experimental mine some years later, the original was a tunnel extending hundreds of feet into the mountain, with a side tunnel branching north and shaft bore extending upward from it.  The original Experimental Mine remains today as the unique rear cavern of a private home.

Experimental Plant - 1951
Photo courtesy Mines Magazine

Even more momentous were plans begun in 1909 for the Experimental Plant.  This highly ambitious building, designed by engineer Frank E. Shepard, was to serve for metallurgical experimentation, including flotation, cyanidization, smelting, chlorination, and many other cutting edge forms of metal extraction.  Costing $100,000 to take 3 years to build, it was the first building comprised entirely of steel ever constructed in Colorado.  This immense 5-story building consisted of a framework of latticed steel beams supporting steel girders and trusses, upon which an outer skin of steel panels was attached, leaving regular gaps for rectangular windows.  As steel of this time was still too brittle to facilitate roof construction, an assembly of wooden planks was built atop the steel trusses to serve as the roof.  The Experimental Plant was the second-largest of its kind in the world, only to the great Krupp works in Germany.  This plant was opened for private corporations to also use it for research, team with the school's efforts, and help expand the abilities of the mining industry.  Its historical importance cannot be underestimated; neither academia nor the field had such facilities to work with before, and the Experimental Plant was responsible for helping many important advances.  Among them was helping facilitate the opening of the Climax Molybdenum Mine, that would become the largest underground mine in North America.  The Experimental Plant had aided in opening the mine producing the metal that could make steel stronger than that in the plant's own construction.

Upper northeast area of the Experimental Plant
Note steel panel and truss construction with wooden roof
Courtesy Gardner Family Collection

2nd story, west center of the Experimental Plant
Note latticed steel post and girder construction supporting concrete floors and machinery
Courtesy Gardner Family Collection

3rd story, east center of the Experimental Plant
Note steel panel outer skin construction with steel walls, trusses, exhaust stack and wooden roof
Courtesy Gardner Family Collection

Experimental Plant in later years
This is its appearance after which the Golden Community Center was modeled
Courtesy Gardner Family Collection

The Experimental Plant would continue its work through the early decades of the 20th Century and beyond.  Its design in time would produce many offspring, most remarkably in the Golden Community Center.  In 1994, the noted architectural firm of Barker, Rinker & Seacat chose to model the new Golden Community Center after Shepard's landmark design, from the majestic sweep of the rooflines to the wooden cathedral ceilings inside.  The Experimental Plant in modern times had been coated by stucco and a red roof, which translated nicely to Golden's new landmark.

Brooks Field, with grass and grandstands in its renovated design
Note Experimental Plant and modern companions in background
Courtesy Gardner Family Collection

Before the first decades of the 20th Century were complete, Athletic Park was to have its own renovation.  Ralph D. Brooks, a new trustee, decided to donate $5,000 to turn SSM's historic gridiron and diamond into a modern athletic facility.  The field was already quite an historic place; football teams that fought epic battles with archrivals University of Colorado, University of Denver and Colorado College had won championships there.  Major league baseball players Bert "Cowboy" Jones and Roy Hartzell had played there.  Their field, which had been a soft dirt surface, was now sodded for the first time.  William "Cement Bill" Williams, the noted contractor that had designed and built Lariat Loop, built new grandstands on the south side, half in 1922, and half in 1924.  More grandstands were added in 1929.  What had long been a dirt field with wooden bleachers had become a full grown stadium, and was named Brooks Field.

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