Ghosts of Industry: Leadville, Colorado

Leadville is a classic mining boom-and-bust town. At more than 10,000 feet in altitude, it's perched on the side of a broad valley and that's rimmed with breathtaking peaks. The town has a tremendous amount of 19th century charm--with its stately brick commercial buildings and Victorian houses. Yet the land all around still bears the scars of the mining boom, which lasted from the 1880s through the early 20th century. You see yellow and black gashes on the hillsides and vast fields of stones with nothing growing on them. Poisoned earth. Some of the old mining buildings and infrastructure remains, but most has returned to dust. The entire town is an EPA Superfund site.

Leadville has special meaning for me because one of my great-grandfathers, John Kee MacGowan, who had grown up a poor, orphaned immigrant boy in Philadelphia, somehow hooked up with the Guggenheim family in Colorado in the late 1890s, got hired, and ultimately became the first non-family partner of Guggenheims Bros., which was at the time the largest mining empire in the world.

My ancestor walked these streets...

Save the Tabor Opera House

The Tabor Opera House has been an iconic institution in the storied ex-mining town of Leadville, Colorado, since it was built during the silver boom in 1879. It has been saved before, but it needs saving again--since the owners are retiring. This is a piece of American history, where generations have enjoyed everything from opera and Shakespeare to performances by Houdini, Oscar Wilde and John Philip Souza's band to boxing matches featuring Jack Dempsey. It needs somebody to carry the baton of American history and culture deep into the 21st century. If you're interested, contact Bill Bland at 303-550-1048, or bill.bland@gmail.com, and visit the Web site at taboroperahouse.net. Says Bill: " We want to find somebody who loves history and would nurture it as a working theater."