Leadville, Colorado

Leadville, as viewed from California Gulch - early photo, date unknown

The Leadville area was first settled in 1859 when placer gold was discovered by A. G. Kelley in California Gulch, and by Abe Lee in April (25/26) 1860,[12] during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush.[13][14] Prospectors panned for gold in the stream that ran through California Gulch in what became the town of Oro City (oro is the Spanish word for gold).[14] Horace Tabor, who became known as the "Leadville Silver King", and his wife Augusta were among the first prospectors to arrive in Oro City. Horace was appointed as the postmaster of Oro City on November 30, 1868.[15] His wife made money as postmistress, banker, cook, and laundress while Tabor was a prospector.[16]

The early miners had noted that mining for placer gold was hampered by heavy black sand in the sluice boxes, and in 1874 it was discovered that the heavy sand that impeded gold recovery was the lead mineral cerussite, which has a high silver content. Prospectors traced the cerussite to its source, present day Leadville, and by 1876 had discovered several silver-lead lode deposits.[13][17] As the gold has been tapped out of the gulch and attention was averted to nearby Leadville, a mile or two away, Oro City became a ghost town.[14]

Circa 1880 - Description reads: "Cabinet Card Photograph of the Silver Mining Boomtown of Leadville, Colorado". The photograph is titled "Capitol Hill Leadville" in manuscript on the reverse. The image looks down on the center of Leadville with the "Eighth Avenue Motel" visible at the center of the photo. Extensive mining works can be seen on the hill that rises on the far side of the town.

Bird's eye view of Leadville, Colo. 1882

Leadville was founded in 1877 by mine owners Horace Tabor and August Meyer at the start of the Colorado Silver Boom. Tabor's house was also built in 1877, at 116 E. 5th Street.[18] The town was built on desolate flat land below the tree line. The first miners lived in a rough tented camp near the silver deposits in California Gulch.[19] Initially, the settlement was called "Slabtown", but when the residents petitioned for a post office, the name "Leadville" was chosen. By 1880, Tabor and Meyer's new town had gas lighting, water mains, 28 miles (45 km) of streets, five churches, three hospitals, six banks, and a school for 1,100 students. Many business buildings were constructed with bricks hauled in by wagons.[20]

In early 1878, Meyer, along with Leadville's pioneer smelter entrepreneur, Edwin Harrison, after whom the famed Harrison Avenue is named,[21] and Tabor established a post office in Leadville, with George L. Henderson designated as postmaster on July 16, 1877.[22] The post office and the telegraph office both prospered, with Tabor serving as postmaster from February 19 to December 13, 1878. It was said that the Leadville post office was the busiest one between St. Louis and San Francisco.[23] In 1878, the town's first hospital, St. Vincent's, was opened.

The town's first newspaper was The Reveille, a Republican weekly, in 1878. Three months later, a competing Democratic weekly, The Eclipse, emerged. The Chronicle was the town's first daily and first newspaper in America to employ a full-time female reporter. Like the Rocky Mountain News, The Chronicle took the lead in outing criminals and thieves, in an attempt to clean up the town's shady business culture. Despite violent threats, the Chronicle survived without major incident.

Interior of the Tabor Opera House

William Nye opened the first saloon in 1877, and it was followed by many others. The same year the Coliseum Novelty was the first theater to open. It offered sleeping rooms upstairs for a nightly rate and provided a variety of entertainments: dancing girls, dogfights, cockfighting, wrestling and boxing matches, and rooms for gambling. In June 1881, it burned to the ground. Ben Wood, who arrived in Leadville in 1878, opened the first legitimate theater, Wood's Opera House, with a thousand seats. It was a first-class theater, where gentleman removed their hats and did not smoke or drink in the presence of a lady. Less than a year later, Wood opened the Windsor Hotel. His opera house was regarded as the largest and best theater constructed in the West, an honor it held until the opening of the Tabor Opera House. Horace Tabor's Opera House was the most costly structure in Colorado at the time. Building materials were brought by wagons from Denver. The massive three-story opera house, constructed of stone, brick, and iron, opened on November 20, 1879. Tabor, originally from Vermont, became the town's first mayor. After striking it rich, he had an estimated net worth of 10 million dollars and was known for his extravagant lifestyle. In February of 1879 the Lake County seat was moved to Leadville, where it has remained ever since.[24] In 1879, An impressive courthouse was built on the west side of Harrison Avenue, joined by a new post office that same year.[25] Telephone service was introduced by Western Union on May 15, 1879 and gas lighting downtown was installed on November 18 that same year.[26] Billings and Eilers Smelter installed a generator and lights for the town on May 13, 1881. On May 19, 1882, a large fire broke out at the corner of Harrison Avenue and East Chestnut.[27]

Matchless mine and Baby Doe Tabor cabin

Horace Tabor divorced his wife of 25 years and married Baby Doe McCourt on September 30, 1882,[28] who was half his age. Tabor was by then a US senator, and the divorce and marriage caused a scandal in Colorado and beyond. For several years, the couple lived a lavish lifestyle in a Denver mansion, but Tabor, one of the wealthiest men in Colorado, lost his fortune when the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act caused the Panic of 1893. He died on April 10, 1899 of appendicitis,[29] destitute but remained convinced that the price of silver would rebound. According to legend, he told Baby Doe to "hold on the Matchless mine ... it will make millions again when silver comes back." She returned to Leadville with her daughters, Silver Dollar and Lily, where she spent the rest of her life believing Tabor's prediction. At one time the "best dressed woman in the West", she lived in a cabin at the Matchless Mine for the last three decades of her life. On March 7, 1935, after a snowstorm, she was found frozen in her cabin, aged about 81 years.[30]

Crystalline gold specimen from the Little Johnny Mine, Breece Hill, Leadville mining district

Mining in the Leadville area began in 1859 when prospectors discovered gold at the mouth of California Gulch. By 1872, placer mining in California Gulch yielded more than $2,500,000, roughly equivalent to $61,000,000 in 2022.[31] In 1876, black sand, once considered bothersome to placer gold miners, was discovered to contain lead carbonates, leading to a rush of miners to the area and the founding of the town in 1877. By 1880, Leadville was one of the world's largest and richest silver camps, with a population of more than 15,000. Income from more than thirty mines and ten large smelting works produced gold, silver, and lead amounting to $15,000,000 annually. The Leadville strike of 1880 was the first major labor conflict in the central Colorado silver boomtown, shutting down most of the area’s mining district from May 26, 1880.[32]

According to one historian of the era, "The outpouring of the precious metal from Leadville transformed the struggling Centennial State into a veritable autocrat in the colony of states. As if by magic the rough frontier town of Denver became a metropolis; stately buildings arose on the site of shanties; crystal streams flowed through the arid plains and the desert blossomed and became fruitful. Poverty gave way to the annoyance of wealth and the fame of silver state spread throughout the world."[33]

Swindles were not uncommon in the mining community. When the Little Pittsburg mine was exhausted of its rich ore body, its managers sold their shares while concealing the mine's actual condition from the other stockholders. "Chicken Bill" Lovell dumped a wheelbarrow load of silver-rich ore into a barren pit on his Chrysolite claim in order to sell it to Horace Tabor for a large price. Tabor had the last laugh when his miners dug a few feet farther and discovered a rich ore body. Some time later the manager of the Chrysolite mine fooled an outside mining engineer into overestimating the mine's ore reserves.[34]

The city's fortunes declined with the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893, although afterwards there was another small gold boom. Mining companies came to rely increasingly on income from the lead and zinc. The district is credited with producing over 2.9 million troy ounces of gold, 240 million troy ounces of silver, 1 million short tons of lead, 785 thousand short tons of zinc (discovered in 1911[35]), and 53 thousand short tons of copper.[36]

Climax molybdenum mine, Colorado, circa 1924 (USGS photo)

A bitter strike by Leadville's hard rock miners in 1896–97 led to bloodshed, at least five deaths, and the burning of the Coronado Mine. In a letter to a London business contact, mine owner Eben Smith wrote, "The strikers got the worst of it in the raid on the Coronado and Emmet [mines], there were 10 or 12 killed; we do not know how many, and a great number wounded; they take care of their wounded the same as the Indians but every now and then a fellow turns up that the rats have been eating or who has gone to decay that we know must have been shot ..."[37]

World War II caused an increase in the demand for molybdenum, used to harden steel. It was mined at the nearby Climax mine, which at one time produced 75 percent of the world's output. By 1980, the Climax Mine was the largest underground mine in the world. Taxes paid by the mine provided Leadville with good schools and libraries and provided employment for many residents. When the market dropped in 1981, Leadville's economy suffered and many people lost their jobs. With little industry other than the tourist trade, most of the former miners left, and the standard of living declined. Climax reopened in 2008 and started production in 2010. It currently is the most efficient mine producing molybdenum in Colorado and is estimated to have a production life of thirty years.[38]

The many years of mining left behind substantial contamination of the soil and water and the Environmental Protection Agency designated some former mines Superfund sites, such as California Gulch.[39] As of 2019, the EPA reports: "A vast majority of the cleanup at the site has been completed, so current risk of exposure is low. Pregnant women, nursing mothers and young children are still encouraged to have their blood-lead levels checked."

Mart J. Duggan

As the population boomed, by 1878, Leadville had the reputation as one of the most lawless towns in the West. The first city marshal was run out of town a few days after he was appointed, and his replacement was shot dead within a month by one of his deputies. Fearing the town would be lost to the lawless element, Mayor Horace Tabor sent for Mart Duggan, who was living in Denver, as a replacement. Duggan is little-known today, but was well known at the time as a fearless gunfighter. Using strong-arm and lawless tactics, during his two stints as marshal, Duggan brought order to Leadville by 1880 when he stepped down. He was shot and killed in 1888 by an unknown assailant, most likely an enemy he had made when he was a Leadville marshal. Historian Robert Dearment writes, "Mart Duggan was a quick-shooting, hard-drinking, brawling tough Irish man, but he was exactly the kind of man a tough, hard-drinking, quick-shooting camp like Leadville needed in its earliest days. His name is all but forgotten today, but the name "Matt Dillon" is recognized around the world. Such are the vagaries of life."[40]

Poker Alice Ivers

Alice Ivers, better known as Poker Alice, was a card player and dealer of the Old West who learned her trade in Leadville. Born in Devonshire, her family moved to America when she was a small girl. They first settled in Virginia, where she attended an elite girls' boarding school. When she was a teenager, her family moved to Leadville when the silver boom drew hundreds of new residents to the area. At the age of twenty she married a mining engineer who, like many of the men at that time, frequented the numerous gambling halls in Leadville. Alice went along, at first just observing, but eventually she began to sit in on the games as well. After a few years of marriage her husband was killed in a mining accident and she turned to cards to support herself. Alice was attractive, dressed in the latest fashions, and was in great demand as a dealer. Eventually Alice left Leadville to travel the gambling circuit, as was common of the male gamblers of that time. She continued to dress in the latest fashions but took to smoking cigars. Well known throughout the West, gambling halls welcomed her because she was good for business. Alice said that she won more than $250,000 by gambling during her lifetime.[41]

Doc Holliday at age 20

Texas Jack Omohundro, Confederate scout, cowboy and stage actor with "Buffalo Bill" Cody's travelling revue, died of pneumonia a month before his 34th birthday on June 28,[42] 1880 in Leadville, where he was living on a small estate with his wife, ballerina Giuseppina Morlacchi.

In the summer of 1879, American author and illustrator Mary Hallock Foote arrived in Leadville.[43] It is believed her time in Leadville inspired her writing.[44][45]

In 1882, shortly after the gun fight at the O.K. Corral, Doc Holliday arrived in Leadville,[46] where he dealt faro. On August 19, 1884, he shot ex-Leadville policeman Billy Allen, who had threatened him for failing to pay a $5 debt. Despite overwhelming evidence implicating him, a jury found Holliday not guilty of the shooting or attempted murder.[47]

Gunfighter and professional gambler Luke Short also spent time in Leadville.[48]

Margaret "Molly" Brown, who became known as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", moved to Leadville in 1885, when she was 18 years old.[49] In 1886 she married a mining engineer who was twelve years older, James Joseph Brown at the Church of Annunciation.[50] The Brown family acquired great wealth in 1893 when Brown was instrumental in the discovery of a substantial gold ore seam at the Little Jonny Mine.

Gold (Little Jonny Mine - Leadville, Colorado)

The mine was owned by his employers, the Ibex Mining Company. Margaret Brown became famous because of her survival of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, after exhorting the crew of Lifeboat No. 6 to return to look for survivors. A 1960 Broadway musical based on her life was produced, along with a 1964 film adaptation of the musical, both titled The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Her home in Denver has been preserved as the Molly Brown House Museum.

Meyer Guggenheim of the Guggenheim family started out in Leadville in mining and smelting. The family went on to possess one of the largest fortunes in the world. Family members have become known for their philanthropy in diverse areas such as modern art and aviation, including several Guggenheim Museums.

Oscar Wilde appeared in April at the Tabor Opera House during his 1882 American Aesthetic Movement lecture tour.[51] The reviews were mixed, and the press satirized Wilde in cartoons as an English dandy decorated with sunflowers and lilies, the floral emblems of the Aesthetic Movement. A Kansas newspaper described the event:

Oscar Wilde's visit to Leadville excited a great deal of interest and curiosity. The Tabor-opera house where he lectured was packed full. It was rumored that an attempt would be made by a number of young men to ridicule him by coming to the lecture in exaggerated costume with enormous sunflowers and lilies and to introduce a number of characters in the costume of the Western "bad men". Probably, however, better counsel prevailed and no disturbance took place.[52]

Mayor David H. Dougan invited Wilde to tour the Matchless Mine and name its new lode "The Oscar". Wilde later recounted a visit to a local saloon, "where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice – 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.'"[53]

Several other notable figures visited the Tabor Opera House, including boxer Jack Dempsey.[54]

Leadville in the 1950s

The town has made major efforts to improve its economy by encouraging tourism and emphasizing its history and opportunities for outdoor recreation. The National Mining Museum and Hall of Fame opened in 1987 with a federal charter that was drawn in by offering a good deal on the former high school building.Leadville drew the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum to town by offering a good deal on the former high school building

The town's altitude and rugged terrain contributes to a number of challenging racing events. Starting in the 1980s, with support from Leadville resident and Lake County Commissioner Ken Chlouber, the city became a popular place for ultramarathons and ultra-distance mountain biking, such as the Leadville Trail 100 series of races. It is often used as a base for altitude training and hosts a number of other events for runners and mountain bicyclists.[55]

Situated within the San Isabel National Forest[83] and surrounded by three wilderness areas, Leadville is popular with hikers and campers. The Mount Massive Wilderness and Buffalo Peaks Wilderness are within 10 miles (16 km) of the city,[84] and the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness is within 20 miles (32 km).[85]

Turquoise Lake lies on the western outskirts of Leadville. Recreation facilities consist of eight campgrounds and two boat-launching ramps. The surface available for recreation includes 780 acres (320 ha). Primary recreation activities include camping and fishing. Fish species include mackinaw trout, rainbow trout, and brook trout. The facilities are closed in winter due to ice and snow, but they remain a popular area for ice fishing. Turquoise Lake is part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project. Recreation is managed by the Forest Service for the Bureau of Reclamation as part of the San Isabel National Forest.[58]

Mosquito Pass

The Top of the Rockies Byway, designated a National Scenic Byway in 1998, is a highway that travels 75 miles (121 km) starting in Aspen and traveling through Leadville to either Minturn or Copper Mountain. Seldom dropping below 9,000 feet (2,700 m), it drives over three mountain passes that are above 10,000 feet (3,000 m), and there are views of six mountains of over 14,000 feet (4,300 m). The Top of the Rockies Byway runs through three national forests: Pike, Arapaho, and White River. The Camp Hale Memorial is located along the byway, where soldiers trained on skis to fight in the Apennine Mountains of Italy during World War II. The road passes through the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area and Arkansas River Headwaters State Park.[86]

Mosquito Pass is located east of Leadville. It can be traversed only on foot, an off-road motorcycle, or with a proper four-wheel drive vehicle. It is typically passable only during the summer months.

• US 24 is an east–west highway running from Interstate 75 near Clarkston, Michigan, to Interstate 70 near Minturn, Colorado. Its western terminus is located just 32 miles (51 km) north of Leadville. It is the main route to the Eagle-Vail valley to the northwest and Colorado Springs, 128 miles (206 km) to the southeast.
• State Highway 91 is a 22.5-mile (36.2 km) highway that connects Leadville with Interstate 70 near Copper Mountain. It is the quickest route to get from Leadville to Denver, 100 miles (161 km) away.

• On July 22 1880,[87] the Denver & Rio Grande Railway arrived on a 3 feet (0.91 m) narrow-gauge railway branch from Malta, 4 miles (6 km) to the west. General Grant and his wife were on hand to celebrate the arrival.[88] Third rail was added in 1888, and from 1940 it was only standard gauge.[89] The last 1.8 miles (2.9 km) were abandoned by Union Pacific in 1998.[90] This severed the connection between the Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad and the rest of the railroad system. The remaining three miles from Malta have not seen any traffic in many years.[89]
  • In the past, D&RG operated branch lines from Leadville to Oro City (1883-1941), Ibex/Chrysolite (1898-1944), Graham Park (1898-1941) and Fryer Hill (1881-1944). Another branch run over Fremont Pass as far as Robinson, Wheeler, and Dillon (1881/2-1923).[91]
• In 1887, the Colorado Midland Railway arrived in Leadville.[92]
• The former Colorado & Southern Railway line from Leadville to Climax is now operated as a tourist line by the Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad.
• In 2010, rail and coach commuter service was proposed between Minturn and Dotsero, in 2012 from Leadville to Vail and Dotsero with intermediate stations at Minturn, Avon, Eagle and Gypsum.[93]