Leadville's fame and famous, booms and busts

The early Californication of Colorado

Hydraulic mining, California Gulch, Colorado, 

photographed and published by W.G. Chamberlain, 1878.

 

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

The early gold camp (it was a gold camp first,) was known by many names: Slabtown, Boughtown, Cloud City, Carbonate, California Gulch, Harrison,  Agassiz, Oro City, and more. When the time came for legal adoption, controversy raged. "One faction favored Harrison for Harrison of the Harrison Reduction Works. Horace Tabor, storekeeper, favored Leadville, and prevailed according to "Colorado Place Names" by Geo R. Eicher. The town's name was chosen for the large amount argentiferous lead ores in the vicinity.

Like the rich and famous of Hollywood, over time, Leadville's visitor and resident list reads like a Who's Who for for early Colorado. 

Horace Tabor, the silver king, comes to mind of course, and his first and second wives, Augusta and Baby Doe. Augusta Tabor was the first postmistress, there, in fact. In 1883 Horace Tabor divorced his wife of 25 years and married Baby Doe McCourt, 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 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. After a snowstorm in March 1935, she was found frozen in her cabin, aged about 81 years.

Mart Duggan, gunslinger and the city's third marshal was asked to come to clean up the town. The first city marshal there 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."

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. In her later years, Alice claimed to have won more than $250,000 at the gaming tables and never once cheated.

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 in summer 1880 in Leadville, where he was living on a small estate with his wife, ballerina Giuseppina Morlacchi.

"Doc" John Henry Holliday, about 1883, shortly after the gun fight at the O.K. Corral,  moved to Leadville, 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.

Luke Short, Gunfighter and professional gambler, also spent time in Leadville.

Margaret "Molly" Brown, who became known as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," moved to Leadville when she was 18. In 1886 she married a mining engineer who was twelve years older, James J. Brown. 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.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 at the Tabor Opera House during his 1882 American Aesthetic Movement lecture tour. 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. 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."

Leadville historic timeline

Leadville.com, the city's site, provides a timeline with some of the following history. 

"Once the second largest city in Colorado and a contender for the state capital, Leadville’s treasure is now found in its 70-square-block historic district where Victorian architecture reigns and stories of the wild west come alive. From gunslingers, outlaws, and con men to madams, love triangles, and lawmen, Leadville had it all. Today, they city’s vibrant history is told through the efforts of eight museums and two walking tours,"says the site.

1860 – Abe Lee Discovers Gold

April 26, 1860, Abe Lee discovered a rich load of placer gold in California Gulch, one mile east of Leadville. In the fall, Leadville’s population reached 10,000 and $2 million in gold had been extracted from California Gulch and nearby Iowa Gulch. Lee staked all of California Gulch with speculative claims, which led to the establishment of the Bylaws of the California Mining District—regulations on the number, size, and type of claims that could be filed. Because of these laws, more prospectors descended upon an already crowded California Gulch.

1877 – Silver Discovered

By 1866, most of Leadville’s placer gold deposits had been depleted, causing many miners to pack up and leave. The remaining prospectors moved closer to town where heavy, black sand blanketed the area. In 1877, after assays contained 15 ounces of silver per ton. Early silver prospectors kept this silver discovery a secret for nearly two years. By 1879, word had spread and Leadville once again became a boom town.

Prospectors and merchants quickly returned to Leadville. Many new hotels, restaurants, saloons, and brothels sprang up. Mines spread southward and fortunes, like Horace Tabor’s and the Guggenheim’s, were made.

1878 – Leadville Gets its Name

Leadville has had several names since its discovery. It’s been known as California Gulch, Boughton, because of the once popular shelters made of tree boughs, Cloud City, because of the way the town is often covered in clouds, Harrison, after the owner of the first smelter, and Slabtown, because of the temporary homes built on slabs. It wasn’t until 1878, when the town petitioned for its first post office, that Horace Tabor gave it its official name, Leadville, after the lead ore found in the area.

1879 – Tabor Opera House Opens

Horace Tabor, one of the country’s most notorious silver magnates, known for, among other things construction of the Tabor Opera House, “the finest theater between St. Louis and San Francisco.”
Building’s materials were brought up in  wagons, making it one of the costliest buildings ever constructed in Colorado. Three stories high, made of stone, brick, and iron, and trimmed with Portland cement, the exterior was painted in red, gold, white, and sky-blue. Inside, red plush seats filled the theater and a curtain with an image of the Royal Gorge draped on the stage. Despite its opulence, the Tabor Opera House built in only 100 days.


1879 – Interlaken Hotel Opens

In 1879, John Statley and Charles Thomas built a hotel on the edge of Twin Lakes. Four years later, James V. Dexter bought the property and turned it into one of the most luxurious resorts Colorado had to offer.
Interlaken Resort, where visitors enjoyed gorgeous lake views, a log tavern, a pool hall, and a shed to accommodate horses —eventually fell on hard times when the lakes’ original dam, built at the turn of the century, was troubled by stagnation,  and suspected of causing disease.
The remains of Interlaken Resort and Dexter’s cabin, built in the mid-1890s, can still be seen today.

1893 – The Bust of the Silver Kings

The 1879 Silver Boom dramatically altered Colorado economy and Leadville’s silver lode alone brought in $82 million,  in part because of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which required the U.S. government to purchase millions of ounces of silver each year. The Act was repealed in 1893, busting silver prices, dropping wages, and putting miners and others out of work. Silver barons, like Horace Tabor, lost huge fortunes and Leadville’s economy limped accordingly.

Ice Palace, 1896, William Henry Jackson

1896 – Creation of the Leadville Ice Palace

After the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, hoping to draw visitors, create jobs, and revitalize the economy, Leadville’s residents built the Leadville Ice Palace, a “fairytale come true.” Constructed in 36 days using 5,000 tons of ice, this 58,000-square-foot palace had an ice skating rink, a curling rink, a theater, toboggan runs, a ballroom, a dance floor, gaming rooms, and a carousel house.
Between Seventh Street and Eighth Street on the top of Capital Hill, Leadville’s Ice Palace was open for three months, from January 1, to March 28, when it started to melt and was condemned. Still, people continued to use the building all the way through June, when the skating rink was at last unusable.
The Ice Palace turned out to be a financial disaster for investors, but visitors said that when “the sun shone through the ice, it looked like 1,000 sparkling lights.”

1907 – San Isabel National Forest Established

San Isabel National Forest is one of eleven national forests in Colorado and features more than a million acres of snow-capped peaks, sparkling lakes, rich meadows, and raging rivers. In 1902, lands were first set aside as forest reserve. In 1907, this forest reserve was officially named San Isabel National Forest. From 1907 to 1945, the San Isabel National Forest grew to include several other large forests. Today, the forest has over 800 miles of hiking trails, several ski areas, 19 fourteeners, several scenic byways, and dozens of campgrounds.

Photos of Leadville, Main Street, in September, 1941, by Marion Post Wolcott

Perfecting the art of getting out of Dodge

"Every dog, we are told, has his day, unless there are more dogs than days."
__ Bat Masterson

Walks with a cane, 

finds legendary trouble

By Rob Carrigan, 
robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Sometimes, a change in scenery is good for your soul, or can save your hide, or it is simply necessary to help clear the air around you. No one understood that better than the legendary gunfighter and Colorado lawman Bat Masterson.
Masterson was a true practitioner of the art (both literally and figuratively) of picking the precise moment to “get out of Dodge.”
As a young man, Masterson worked as an army scout in conflicts with Kiowa and Comanche tribes. His first gunfight occurred in a bar in Sweetwater, Texas.
Melvin A. King, an army corporal, who became jealous and combative upon finding Molly Brennan in the company of one Bat Masterson at the Lady Gay Saloon, began firing upon them.
According to some accounts, Miss Brennan jumped in front of Masterson in hopes of heading off the violence and preventing King from shooting him, but both were hit anyway. As Masterson fell, he shot King, who had paused to cock his pistol. Both King and Molly died of their wounds, and it left Masterson using his cane for the rest of his life.
After serving as a deputy for the city (and later in the famous Dodge City Peace Commission) alongside Wyatt Earp in wild and wooly Dodge City, Kansas, Masterson eventually became Ford County Sheriff. His brother Ed, became City Marshall of Dodge City. Ed was killed in fight with two drunken cowboys outside a saloon in Dodge City in 1878.
Bat Masterson became a deputy U.S. Marshall in 1879 while continuing to serve as county sheriff, but by 1880, after losing a re-election bid for Ford County Sheriff and still despondent from the slaying of his brother, he found it was time to get out of Dodge'.
For the next few years he passed most of his time playing or dealing cards, drinking and chasing women in places like Leadville, Trinidad and Tombstone, Ariz., with his longtime friends, the Earp brothers.
In 1882, he was hired by the city of Trinidad to clean up the town as town marshal and was by most accounts, successful. In the meantime, the Earps, along with 'Doc' John Holiday had managed to get into their legendary trouble at the OK Coral in Tombstone. Finding it necessary to get of town themselves, they ended up in Trinidad. Being an officer of the law at the time of the incident, Wyatt Earp was somewhat protected from legal troubles in Arizona, but Doc Holiday was in danger of being extradited for his role in the shootout. Masterson, according to some reports, was able to help out by having him arrested in Trinidad on trumped-up charges and making sure that trial delays and hearing postponements gummed up Holiday’s extradition back to Arizona. Holiday was however arrested in Denver, but Colorado refused to extradite and he lived out the remaining five years of his life here in Colorado.
Masterson returned to Dodge City several times over the next few years but, but in each case, he seemed to run into some form of trouble there. Visiting in 1881, he stepped off a train and into a gunfight with two men who were badgering his younger brother Jim. The fight was stopped by shotgun-brandishing authorities, and one of the wounded men was taken to the Doctor. Masterson, for his part in the affair, paid a small fine and left on the evening train.
He showed up again in Dodge City in 1883 for the “Dodge City War” that wasn’t. The scrap developed between the town’s saloon keepers and the city authorities but it turned out to be a bunch of hub-bub over nothing. In 1886, he was back in town again and ended up smacking Nellie Spencer’s husband with a pistol and ran off with Nellie.
That relationship, however, was short-lived and by 1891 he owned and managed the Palace Variety Theater in Denver and married actress Emma Walters. He began writing sports columns for George’s Weekly, a sporting newspaper in Denver. He also spent some time managing a gambling hall in Creede (where he reportedly got liquored up on occasion and would walk down the street late at night shooting out business lights and then come back in the morning an pay for the damage).
Denver, started wearing on him as well.
“When a boxing promotion partnership with Otto Floto, sports editor of the Denver Post, ended rancorously, Masterson took up the pen to retaliate against vituperation Floto hurled at him in his columns. The word battle led to a street brawl in July 1900. Bat belabored Floto with his cane and sent him running. Many Denverites viewed the feud as a comic affair, but it grew more serious when Floto and his Post employers imported notorious gunman ‘Whispering Jim’ Smith to deal with Masterson. The two gunfighters never met, but in May 1902 Bat, disgusted with Denver, left town,” wrote R.K. DeArment in the June, 2001 edition of “Wild West.”
Masterson spent the rest of his days in New York City, much of the time working as Sports Editor at the New York Morning Telegraph and died at his typewriter in 1921, having just finished his final column.
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Tools in the holster and tell-tale choice

“The difficulty in life is the choice.”
__ George Moore, 1900

It is said that you can tell a lot about somebody by the choices they make. Favorite Beatle, Fat Tire beer in the cooler or Miller High Life in Fridge, plain or peanut, Ford Ranger or Subaru Outback – it all gives a bit of insight.
What then, can we learn from a particular preference in firearm?
Men of violence, of course, sometimes choose paths that make the firearm necessary in the first place. But once headed down that path, what compels them to shove a particular tool in the holster?
The Samuel Colt Co., in 1873 developed Peacemaker model and it became an immediate hit here in what was the “Wild West.”
“It was originally produced in .45 caliber, with a 7 ½ inch barrel, for Ordinance issue to troops. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry troopers each carried one of these weapons with 18 rounds of ammunition in addition to his Springfield .45-70 single shot,” wrote Robert B. Cormack, in a paper for the Denver Westerners Monthly Roundup in 1962.
Part of its popularity was the result of genius of forethought by Colt in chambering this six-shooter for the same cartridges used in the Winchester Model ’73.
The ‘hog leg,’ or ‘plow handle’ and even sometimes called a ‘cutter’ was the first large revolver to use self-exploding, center fire cartridges.
“Bat Masterson’s favorite Colt was a .45 cal. single action with a stubby 4 ¾ inch barrel. Wyatt Earp usually wore two of this caliber. The left one won was a ‘Peacemaker’ with a 7 ½ inch barrel, the right had a 12 inch barrel. Known as a ‘Buntline Special,’ this Colt had been made to order and presented to him. According to the testimony of his friends, Doc Holliday definitely did not lug a shotgun everywhere with him. His pet was a nickel-plated .38 double action Colt, though on many occasions he was known to carry additional artillery. Billy the Kid had small hands, and therefore preferred his .41 Colt double-action Colt to the .44-40 he sometimes used. Butch Cassidy favored the Frontier.44-40 colt with a 7 ½ inch barrel. Wild Bill Hickock gained his fame with two 1851 Colt Navy .36s with ivory grips. He retained his fame with two ‘Peacemakers’ and died with a Smith & Wesson tip-up .32 rim-fire revolver in his pocket,” wrote Cormack.
Perhaps one of the most interesting elements of the times, was how commonplace the option of packing a piece was.
After all, when the McCarty gang, buddies of Butch Cassidy, decided to rob the Farmers & Merchant Bank in Delta and a bank teller started yelling for help and was shot and killed by Fred McCarty, it was the owner of the hardware store who came to the rescue.
“Ray Simpson, junior owner of the hardware store of W.G. Simpson & Son was cleaning his Sharps .44 caliber rifle at the time of the bank robbery. The hardware store was directly across Main Street from the bank. Simpson was thirty-one, a tall and slender man. He loved to hunt and was a crack shot. He was quiet, cool and calm,” notes Ken Jessen in his 1986 book “Colorado Gunsmoke.”
“Upon hearing the two shots from the interior of the bank, Simpson quickly pulled the lever down on his Sharps to drop the breech block. He inserted a shell and grabbed several more as he ran out of the store … Just then, he saw the outlaws coming at full gallop down the alley. Simpson fired from the hip at the man in the rear, Bill McCarty. The entire top of Bill’s head was blown off, and his brains ended up some twenty feet from where he fell from his horse. Simpson dropped the breech block again to insert another shell,” Jessen wrote.
“In the meantime, young Fred McCarty pulled up to see if could help his fallen father. Fred was nearly a block away from Simpson, but that moment of hesitation gave Simpson a clear shot. The bullet from Simpson’s rifle hit Fred in the base of the skull, then came out his forehead. Tom McCarty did not slow to see what happened to his brother or his nephew, but continued to ride hard. Money from the robbery was scattered in all directions in the street,” according to Jessen.
Simpson fired again, and then once more at Tom McCarty but missed each time, hitting instead a riderless horse.
Later Tom McCarty sent letters for months to Simpson, threatening to avenge the killing of his brother and nephew.
Simpson eventually made the choice to leave Delta and move to California, and lived a relatively long life for the times, surviving until 1940. Tom McCarty is said to have hid out in the Paradox Valley, on the Dolores River in Montrose County, for some time after the robbery but eventually left the area also, possibly ending up in Oregon, Alaska or Montana.
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Photo Information:
1. Father and son, Bill and Fred McCarty, killed with Ray Simpson's .44 caliber Sharps rifle while trying to flee a robbery of the Farmers and Merchant Bank in Delta, Colorado. Interestingly, as the two outlaw's bodies were displayed for several days in downtown Delta as a lesson in making bad choices, notice that the undertaker apparently shaved the two, located Bill's hat, and styled (or at least combed) Fred's hair. 
2. William Alexander (Bill) McCarty.
3. Fred McCarty.
4. William Ray Simpson.

Colorado tales of revisionist history

Who did the killing and where they went to dental school?

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Two recent Colorado tales are favored by revisionist history.
First, Doc Holliday’s tombstone in a Glenwood Springs graveyard was erroneous.
“A monument at Linwood Cemetery has offered such details as when Holliday was born — 1852 — and the place of his birth — Valdasta, Ga. Visitors learn that he attended Baltimore Dental School, and that he died in a Glenwood sanitarium,” notes a recent Associated Press article.
“The trouble is, however, this information is wrong.”
Holliday was born in Griffin, Ga. in 1851, not 1852, and he went to school at Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in Philadelphia, not Baltimore. He died in the Hotel Glenwood before the town had a sanitarium.
The Frontier Museum in Glenwood Springs with help from the city corrected the errors a few years ago by installing a new monument built by Snyder Memorials of Grand Junction.
The original monument was put up sometime in the 1950s when little historical data was available. Holliday died Nov. 8, 1887 and is believed to be buried in Linwood Cemetery near the monument.
In another possible instance of correction presents itself in the case of Alfred Packer, the “Colorado Cannibal.” A Denver Post article by Nancy Lofholm notes that Packer ate his five fellow travelers during an 1874 snowbound winter in the San Juans .
David Bailey, curator of the museum of Western Colorado, led a crew of archeologists that spent several days in the fall a few years ago, using ground-penetrating radar and ultra sensitive metal detectors to examine the massacre site in Hinsdale County. Bailey will be happy if he finds anything that upholds his belief that Packer was wrongly accused of murdering his five companions.
Bailey has no doubt that Packer ate the would-be prospectors in Slumgullion Pass in the winter of 1874 but he thinks evidence will eventually prove another member of the party, Shannon Bell, actually did most of the killing.
“Packer wrote in a confession that after subsisting on rose buds, pine gum and boiled moccasins for weeks while trapped in the deep snow, Bell went berserk and killed the others with a hatchet.,” according to Lofholms article.
“Packer became a diner rather than dinner because he was scouting for food when the massacre happened.” In his confession, he said he shot Bell in self-defense when he attacked him upon his return.
Dumbbell-shaped nuggets, believed to be bone bits, were found buried in soft dirt down a hillside from where the five victims of the crime were buried, the Denver Post reported a few years ago. No definitive word yet whether this new information proves either guilt or innocence. In the meantime, Bailey and other will continue to review information to try and find out what really happened up there in snowy San Juans.
Bailey has written several articles since the 2001 discovery by Dr. Richard Dujay of Mesa State College turned up microscopic fragments in the dirt taken from under Shannon Bell’s remains that were matched with the bullets remaining in Packer’s pistol. He holds that this corroborates Packer’s version of what happened, but many historians disagree saying that it only proves Bell was killed by a gunshot.
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