The City of Arvada is a Home Rule Municipality in Jefferson and Adams counties, located northwest of Denver. The population is around 125,000.

An interesting place to shop is the Arvada Olde Town Historic District. It provides an eclectic shopping, dining and entertainment experience. In 2016, it will also include one of three area transit stops as part of the metropolitan FasTracks light rail system. As part of the National Registry of Historic Districts, Olde Town is nationally recognized at the highest level.

The Arvada Center for the Arts & Humanities is one of the nation’s largest multidisciplinary arts centers in the country. It offers a year-round theatre series and a number of art gallery exhibitions annually. For more information visit arvadacenter.org.

The Apex Park and Recreation District offers fun, affordable, safe and accessible recreation to residents and members of neighboring communities. Its goal is to welcome and encourage all current and new participants to get active and stay active for a better quality of life. This is achieved through hundreds of activities offered at dozens of year-round and seasonal facilities throughout Arvada. For detailed information about the district, visit apexprd.org .

• Arvada was the site of the first gold strike in Colorado.  On June 22, 1850, a wagon train, bound for California, crossed the Platte River just north of the confluence with Clear Creek, following Clear Creek west for six miles.  The members of the wagon train rested for a day, and Lewis Ralston dipped his gold pan in an unnamed mountain stream.  He found almost $5 in gold in his first pan.  The stream was later named Ralston Creek in his memory.

• Arvada is named after the brother-in-law of its founder.  Benjamin F. Wadsworth filed a town plat in 1870 and Mary, Wadsworth's wife, named the new town in honor of her brother-in-law, Hiram Arvada Haskin.

• In the early years, Arvada was famous for its pascal celery, which was served for holiday dinners at the White House in the early 1900s.  In fact, Arvada was once known as the “Celery Capital of the World.” 

• The first King Soopers was in Olde Town Arvada in 1947.  Lloyd J. King was the owner.

• Louis Larsen, an Arvadan, was the railroad engineer who took the first train through the Moffat Tunnel in 1938.

• The first traffic signal in Jefferson County was at the corner of Wadsworth and Grandview in 1941.

• Arvadan T. H. Krause invented the automobile turn signal.