Horace Tabor and the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado

The Tabor Opera House. Leadville, Colorado

Leadville, Colorado, is the highest elevation city in North America at 10,152 feet (3094.3 m). It lies among the headwaters of the Arkansas River in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. It was a rough and tumble mining town when the district started out as a gold placer mining settlement during the Colorado Gold Rush and was first called Slabtown. When large amounts of silver were discovered in the 1870s it became one of the world's largest and richest silver producers and its name was changed to Leadville.

 In February of 1878, an election was held in Leadville and Vermont native Horace Austin Warner Tabor (often referred to as H. A. W. Tabor) became the first mayor of the town. Tabor was a local storekeeper in Leadville and was one of the original pioneers of the area in 1860.  As a shopkeeper, Horace Tabor made a habit of grubstaking prospectors that were newly arrived in Leadville (grubstaking was the practice of supplying prospectors with tools and supplies in exchange for a percentage of any discoveries they make). 

Two young German immigrants that Tabor had grubstaked made a fabulous silver strike on Fryer Hill which would become known as the Little Pittsburg mine. Almost two million dollars in silver would be taken from the mine in just two years. Tabor's one-third interest in Little Pittsburg made him a rich man. He invested his returns in additional claims which often proved just as rich. Tabor would ultimately become the leading tycoon of the district and a prominent figure in both Leadville and all of Colorado.

Tabor wanted to bring arts and culture to Leadville so he had the Tabor Opera House constructed in 1879 in just 100 days at a price of $40,000--an exorbitant price at that time. The building materials he wanted weren’t available in Leadville, so he had them brought by wagon over Colorado’s highest mountain passes. Sparing no expenses, the massive three-story opera house was made of stone, brick, and iron, trimmed with Portland cement. Its solid brick walls stand 16 inches thick!  The opera house's ornate interior had richly painted walls and ceiling frescoes, custom carpets, hand-painted stage curtains, and the first gas lights in Leadville.  

Eventually, the Tabor Opera House became known as the finest opera house west of the Mississippi. Luminaries such as Oscar Wilde, John Philip Sousa, Buffalo Bill, actress Sarah Bernhardt, performer Anna Held, and more celebrities appeared at the Tabor.

Tabor lost ownership of the opera house because of the Silver Crash of 1893, as he lost his fortune. In 1893, Judge A.S. Weston bought the Tabor Opera House for $32,000 when the Tabors defaulted on a note to A.V. Hunter.  It has other names and owners through the years--a full history can be read on this link.  The City of Leadville bought the building in 2016 and is making progress on a rehabilitation project estimated to cost $10 million. Leadville's nonprofit Tabor Opera House Preservation Foundation and dedicated community members are finding all possible resources to save the grande dame of Leadville.

Tours of the Tabor Opera House are expected to return in the spring of 2021.  If you watch the YouTube video below you can see some of the interiors and learn more about this beautiful opera house.

Due to his wealth and popularity in Leadville, Tabor was elected as Lieutenant Governor of Colorado in 1878 and served as interim U.S. senator from 1883-1884. Tabor, a married man, had an affair with a young woman, Elizabeth McCourt, who was nicknamed "Baby Doe." He divorced his wife Augusta and married Baby Doe in March of 1883. The entire affair was considered scandalous. Subsequent attempts to run for governor in the 1880s were unsuccessful as Tabor's status among Denver's elite soured, and he lost support for his reelection.  Horace Tabor died penniless, of appendicitis, in 1899. Baby Doe moved back to Leadville to live on one of Tabor's last holdings, the Matchless Mine. She lived alone, in a cabin at the mine, for over 35 years. During the winter of 1935, Baby Doe was found frozen to death in her cabin.  You can see Baby Doe's cabin and the Matchless Mine on my blog at this link.

Leadville is certainly an interesting place to visit, full of rich mining history and legends of the wild west that once walked its streets, such as Horace Tabor, Baby Doe, Doc Holiday, and Molly Brown.

To see more photos and attractions of Leadville on my blog click on this link. To see a beautiful scenic train ride my husband and I took with friends on the Leadville Colorado and Southern Railroad click on this link.

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Baby Doe Tabor and the Matchless Mine.

When my husband and I visited Leadville, Colorado--click here to read that post--we decided to visit the legendary Matchless Mine site. In 1879, silver tycoon, Horace Tabor, had purchased the richest silver mine of the time, an investment that brought in $2 billion by today’s standards.  Prospectors had first come to the Leadville area looking for placer gold in the 1860s but it was soon depleted. Siver Carbonate was discovered in 1878 and by the 1880s Leadville was the world's premier silver producer and a thriving metropolis.

Please click on this photo to enlarge it

We were also intrigued by the true saga of Baby Doe Tabor whose rags to riches to rags story was the subject of an opera "The Ballad of Baby Doe" that we saw a few years earlier in Central City, Colorado.  Baby Doe was born Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt in 1854, one of fourteen children to a family of moderate means in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  She was known for her exceptional beauty of golden locks, large striking blue eyes, and petite figure.  She was also ambitious and wanted to marry out of poverty.  Elizabeth met and married Harvey Doe in 1877.  Harvey was an heir to a mining dynasty, as his father William Harvey Doe, Sr. owned a substantial number of mining claims in Colorado.  They moved to Central City, Colorado where her husband began mining for gold. The other miners found Elizabeth so beautiful that they started calling her “Baby Doe,” and the nickname stuck. After three years, her husband fell into debt and began drinking and soon afterward Baby Doe sued him for a divorce. She moved to Leadville, where she met the "Silver King," Horace Tabor, who was twice her age. They fell in love, but Tabor was married at the time and he divorced his wife of twenty-five years, Augusta, so that he and Baby Doe could be married in 1883.  Baby Doe's extravagant silk $7,000 wedding dress is part of the History Colorado Center's collection, and you can see it and read the interesting story about it on this link.

The couple became known as “The Silver King and Queen,” for living an elaborate life together in a Capitol Hill mansion in Denver. They had two daughters, Elizabeth, known as “Lily” and Rose Mary, known as “Silver Dollar.” Many of Denver’s elite disapproved of the Tabors and they especially shunned Baby Doe. Tabor's divorce and remarriage to the young and beautiful Baby Doe was the biggest scandal of the 1880s in Colorado. 
Tabor was one of the wealthiest men in Colorado, supporting his wife in an extravagant and lavish style, showering her with jewels and expensive clothes. Unfortunately, he eventually lost his fortune when the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act caused the Panic of 1893 depression, which resulted in widespread bankruptcies in silver-producing regions such as Colorado. He was destitute when he died in 1899, and Baby Doe returned to Leadville with her two daughters, living out the rest of her life there.

Legend has it that on his deathbed, Horace told Baby Doe to "...hold on the Matchless mine … it will make millions again when silver comes back." Baby Doe, loyal to her husband and hoping to regain her wealth, moved to Leadville to oversee the mine and got permission from the eventual new owners to live in the supply cabin at the Matchless Mine. Baby Doe spent the rest of her life in the small one-room cabin as seen in the photo above.

Inside the cabin

For nearly thirty-six years following Tabor's death, Elizabeth struggled to profit from the Matchless Mine. She was able to lease the property for various iron, zinc, manganese, and silver ore mining operations, though it never produced what it had during Leadville's great silver boom days. In her later years, Elizabeth became somewhat of a recluse and was seen wandering in Leadville, wearing rags on her feet.  After a snowstorm in March 1935, she was found frozen in her cabin, aged about 81 years.

Sadly, after her death, vandals broke into Baby Doe's cabin and stole everything. Many were looking for her legendary jewels, but most likely they had all been sold long before her death.

The "Best Dressed Woman in the West" and the last known photo of Baby Doe in 1933

Please click on this photo to enlarge it

Meanwhile, as fate would have it, Tabor's first wife, Augusta, went on to become a millionaire after their divorce by investing in the Singer Manufacturing Company which made sewing machines.

It's easy to see how the story of Horace Tabor and Elizabeth "Baby Doe" Tabor's lives of riches, scandal, great love, debauchery, poverty, devotion, and tragic endings could be made into an opera and the inspiration for a movie and many books.     

 The Matchless Mine itself is surprisingly small in size.

Please click on this photo to enlarge it

During its profitable years, it produced 1.9 million dollars worth of silver--worth billions in today's economy.

Please click on this photo to enlarge it to read the placard

In 2006 a rig drilled a new core hole to investigate deposits of the Matchless Mine and it was determined that almost all the valuable high-grade silver had been removed by Horace Tabor's miners in the 1880s, leaving the area worthless as a mine, but rich in history.

We enjoyed visiting and learning more about the tragic life of Baby Doe and learning more about the Matchless Mine. Colorado is full of history in so many unique places.

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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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Ghost Towns of Vicksburg and Winfield, Colorado

In autumn of 2019, my husband and I took a scenic drive in Colorado into Clear Creek Canyon, between Buena Vista and Leadville, Colorado to visit the silver mine ghost towns of  Vicksburg and Winfield.

We took Highway 24 north from Buena Vista until we reached County Road 390/Clear Creek Reservoir.  CR 390 is an unpaved dirt/gravel road but it is easily traveled by a regular car or SUV.  The surrounding trees along the road and high up in the Sawatch Mountain Range had the beginnings of beautiful autumn color.

There were many beautiful mountain views along the drive.

In about nine miles we reached the town of Vicksburg.

Vicksburg was founded in 1867 after prospectors from Leadville, Colorado, who were camping out in the Clear Creek Canyon lost their burros. The burros had wandered down the creek and when the miners found their pack animals, they discovered gold in the creek bed as well. More than gold, however, the surrounding area was rich in silver and copper. Early miners brought in "Balm of Gilead" (balsam poplar) trees on the backs of burros and planted them to line the main street of Vicksburg, where they still remain

Vicksburg was the second largest town in the canyon, with around 600-700 people during its peak. A museum is open here on some weekends during the summer, run by the Clear Creek Historical Society.  Many of the cabins in Vicksburg are now privately owned and seasonally occupied.

Quite a few interesting vintage mining implements and machines were on display around the cabins.

After visiting Vicksburg we continued on our drive...

...passing an area that obviously suffered an avalanche in winter at one time as many aspen trees lay broken on their sides along the side of the road.

Between Vickburg and Winfield is a small assortment of cabins for rent where more silver-boom towns once stood -- the towns of Rockdale and Silverdale. There are rustic cabins available for daily rent here. We spoke with a forest ranger who was sweeping out a cabin and she told us fishermen, hikers, mountain climbers, etc, rent the cabins all summer.

Continuing on for about five miles we reached the end of the county road and the town of Winfield.

Winfield was founded in 1861 with the first recorded silver prospecting done in 1867. Located on 120 acres at the junction of the north and south forks of Clear Creek, the town made lots of 50×100 free to anyone who desired to build there. In its prime, around 1890, some 1500 people lived in town. The silver market crash and depression in 1893 halted the mining activity in Clear Creek Canyon. There was a resumption in the early 1900s and the last ore was hauled out of the canyon by two-horse wagon in 1918.

Please click on photo to enlarge it

The history of the town is displayed in an open book in the Winfield schoolhouse window.

Two of the buildings are open as a museum during the summer, hosted by members of the Clear Creek Historical Society, while the rest are now privately owned and occupied seasonally.

There were quite a few trailheads located at the end of Winfield. The Winfield Cemetery was a quarter mile down a narrow winding road that would require high clearance 4WD.  Although 26 people are buried there, only two stone marker stones for children remained. In 2016, a descendant of one of the men buried there worked with the historical society to clean up the cemetery and place wooden crosses on the graves.  If you would like to see a local Denver news video about that effort and the story click here.

Can you imagine living such a rugged life at 10,000 feet, all because of hopes and dreams of finding riches in the surrounding mountains? The gold and the silver rush is the pioneer story of the state of Colorado and became the "boom and bust" of many a town.  To see more Colorado mining ghost towns visit my post on the Independence Pass Ghost Town--click here--and Saint Elmo Ghost Town--click here.

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