Leadville, Colorado

Thank you to all who commented on my last post about the coronavirus pandemic and for your encouraging words. This is a serious time in history and hopefully, we will all stay well and persevere. We continue to stay home as much as possible to help "flatten the curve" and practice "social distancing" when we do have to go out.

 I am continuing to blog about Colorado and some wonderful places my husband and I visited last fall.  After we visited the ghost mining towns of Vicksburg and Winfield in the Sawatch Mountain Range----click here to read that post-- we drove on US Route 24 towards Leadville. Colorado.  We stopped along the way to take the photo above of the Arkansas River.

It was a scenic drive and we saw distant waterfalls and autumn foliage

Leadville, Colorado is a former silver mining town that lies among the headwaters of the Arkansas River in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.  Its elevation is 10,200 feet (3,094m).

Please click on this photo to enlarge

Leadville is quite proud of its mining history and its distinct position of having the highest elevation of any city in the United States.  It also has a rich history of fortune-seeking miners and infamous outlaws. Wealthy businessman Horace Tabor, the Silver King, and his second wife Baby Doe, gun-slinging dentist Doc Holliday, Margaret "Molly" Brown, and Meyer Guggenheim are just a few frontier characters who contributed to the town’s history.

Leadville is situated between two mountain ranges, the Mosquito Range to the east and the Sawatch Range to the west, and the mountains dominate the horizon, one of which is Mount Elbert, the highest summit of the Rocky Mountains of North America and the highest point in Colorado  An ultra-prominent 14,440-foot (4,401 m) fourteener, Mount Elbert is the highest summit of the Sawatch Range and the second-highest summit in the contiguous United States after Mount Whitney in California. The other prominent mountain is Mount Massive, at 14,428 ft (4,398 m).  It is the second-highest summit in the Rocky Mountains and the state of Colorado, and the third-highest in the contiguous United States.

This was our second visit to Leadville, In our first visit we took a ride on the historic Leadville Colorado and Southern Railroad--click here to see that post.  We walked up and down its main street admiring all the Victorian-era buildings.

Horace Tabor's Opera House in Leadville 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.

The Silver Dollar Saloon caught our eye and we went inside to explore it.

This historic bar opened in 1879 and has hosted some famous names from Oscar Wilde to Doc Holliday. It's filled with photos from the past and such memorabilia.

An interesting mural along the street was of the legendary Tenth Mountain Division skiers from Camp Hale, located 16 miles north of Leadville.

Please click on this photo to enlarge

My husband and I visited the Camp Hale area along the Top of the Rockies Scenic Byway--click here to read that post. After two years of rigorous training, the Tenth Mountain Division was ordered to Italy in 1945 to prepare for an advance of the U.S. Army. They breached the supposedly impregnable Gothic Line in the Apennines and secured the Po River Valley to play a vital role in the liberation of northern Italy. By the time the Germans surrendered in May 1945, 992 ski troopers had lost their lives and 4,000 were wounded. This was the highest casualty rate of any U.S. division in the Mediterranean.

One place we did not get a chance to visit on this trip to Leadville as it was too late in the day was The National Mining Hall of Fame. It is known as the "Smithsonian of the Rockies" and the "Premier Showcase of American Mining" The National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum houses 25,000 square feet of interactive and informative exhibits sharing the evolving narrative of mining and its relationship to our everyday lives.  

Before we left Leadville to go back to our hotel in Buena Vista, we stopped by Turquoise Lake.

Located five miles west of Leadville, Turquoise Lake is one of Colorado’s favorite high-altitude recreation destinations. Dammed in the 19th century and named for the rare turquoise deposits found nearby, Turquoise Lake offers 1,800 acres of year-round recreational fun.

We also passed the Mt. Massive Golf Course on the ride back. It's North America's Highest Gold Course! My husband had to call all his golfing buddies back in New York to tell them all about it. It certainly had some beautiful views.

One other place we visited in Leadville was Horace Tabor's Matchless Mine.  It deserves a post of its own, as it also tells the scandalous and tragic story of the time of "Baby Doe" one of the most talked-about women of the time--more in my next post!

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