Annie Wilson (nee Richards) is cradling a snapshot photograph of her siblings taken by her Aunt Dixie in the back of the family home on 11th St. circa 1938-39. George, Annie, Lena, Betty, Bertha and Polly (not born at the time) are the six offspring of mother Johanna Maria Van Hoepen and father George Richards (Sr.). WW1 veteran George had arrived in Golden from England in 1930, met and married Johanna one year later.

Johanna was one of the few babies born in the Golden hospital back in

1912. Her father Egbert arrived in Golden from Holland in 1909 looking for the land of milk and honey he’d been told about. He took up horse logging for the Columbia River Lumber Co. Then, his wife, Johanna (Sr.) arrived in November, 1911 with two children in tow and walked out of the CPR station to be met by a wall of snow and a husband off in the bush. As the story goes, Granny Johanna eventually found her way to the little shack on 11th Street and it took 22 buckets of water to clean the place to her satisfaction.

The background photograph is from a negative taken by William Wenman in 1921 of 2nd Ave. N (now 9th Ave. N.). Go out the Gallery door and look across the street and you will be standing in William Wenman’s footprints. Granny Johanna would have walked this street in 1921 because it’s said that from the time she arrived in Golden she stayed within the town limits until her death in 1963 – exactly 52 years to the day.