Golden
During Prohibition, Adolph Coors had to dump more than 17,000 gallons of beer into Clear Creek, but just two blocks away, Henry “Heinie” Foss continued to sell alcohol at his drugstore.
Pharmacies were allowed to sell alcohol as medicinal treatment, said Golden historian Rick Gardner, adding, “People found doctors who were willing to write prescriptions for 100-proof bourbon whiskey.”
The legal loophole was one of many features that have endeared Foss General Store – later known as Foss Drug – to Golden residents.
But Foss Drug’s days as the place you can buy just about anything are numbered.
Foss Co. president Bob Lowry recently announced with “deep regret” that the venerable drugstore will close after 94 years of the same family serving the tight-knit Golden community.
Purchased by Foss in 1913, the sprawling store is where residents could pay utility bills, have prescriptions filled, meet for lunch or a refreshing soda and buy gifts, greeting cards – and lots of liquor.
Generations have delighted in the store’s eye-popping cache of old-time and modern candy, vintage signs and equipment and collectibles.
The landmark at 1224 Washington Ave. also has lured generations of tourists to gawk at the vast array of Western paraphernalia and to buy humorous souvenirs such as elk-dropping chocolates.
“It’s really sad to see it go,” said Tom Young, a Golden fire captain who worked in Foss’ camera department when he was in junior high and high school and again in the mid-1980s.
“Golden’s downtown is not going to be the same,” Young added. “It’s going to be hard to say goodbye to what is such a legendary store.”
May Jewell, who said she has shopped at Foss for 49 years, was more blunt as she hugged sales clerks.
“It’s the pits,” she said. “It’s change, and it’s not for the better.”
Lowry and owner Frederick Allen “Heinie” Foss – the founder’s son who took up the reins in 1937 – have declined to give interviews about the pending closure because of “the emotional nature associated with closing a business of this tenure,” according to a news release.
The closing was brought on by a drastic change in the pharmacy business that has “created tremendous hardships on independent community pharmacies such as Foss,” Lowry said in a statement.
“It’s a tribute to Bob Lowry and how he was able to take the drugstore and keep it running against the fierce competition,” said Golden businessman Greg Stevinson, who recalled trips to Foss’ soda fountain on hot July days.
Stevinson also remembered business meetings held at Foss’ second-floor family restaurant, the Golden Ram, which was replaced in 2003 by the Miners Alley Playhouse.
“The epicenter of business in Golden was Foss,” Stevinson said. The closing, he added, “is really a shame. It’s the passing of an era.”
Henry Foss bought the store in 1913, four years before Buffalo Bill was laid to rest on Lookout Mountain.
The store is three historic buildings – the original store is the central 25 feet, with the Hertel clothing store on the north purchased in 1917 and the Safe way building on the south purchased in 1934.
Over the years, Dorothy Foss – Henry Foss’ widow, who once borrowed money against her wedding ring to meet payroll – and Heinie Foss expanded it seven times and did six renovations.
In 1994, artist Robert Dafford painted a massive mural on the south wall on 13th Street that depicts places and people in Golden history. Heinie Foss is the young boy on a bicycle.
Inside this week, residents and tourists strolled about on the wood floors as the going-out-of-business sale began.
While the store is historic as a place, its architecture isn’t, city officials said. The store will close about Sept. 1, and what will take its place in the building isn’t known.
“It’s important not to wipe out all indications that Foss was there,” historian Gardner said of whatever moves in. It’s also important, he said, “that it give vitality to downtown and be an asset like that what it replaces.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
