Official Visitor Guide

Heritage at Altitude
We're Colorado's historic gem.
Welcome to the Old West! Leadville may well be the West’s most
authentic mining town, with a vivid Colorado heritage of wild contrasts: mining wealth and
high-falutin' residents, to the down-and-out; incredible luck to devastating misfortune.
“Chicken Bill” Lovell, “Broken Nose” Scotty, “Big
Nose” Kate and Soapy Smith are all part of Leadville’s
colorful cast of characters. Mary Foote, the real-life
inspiration for Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel "Angle of Repose" was a resident.
Teddy Roosevelt also paid visits to Leadville, and
Ulysses S. Grant arrived on the first train to Leadville.
Gunslinger-gambler-dentist Doc Holliday was one of
the most legendary visitors to Leadville. Conflicting
accounts of his story abound, but records indicate that
he shot and wounded Bill Allen in August 1884; the
last man on record shot by Holliday.
The 1893 repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act
spelled ruin for Horace Tabor and more. Local
businessmen decided to combat the downturn of the
economy by building the incredible Ice Palace during
the winter of 1895-1896. The magnitude and ambition
of this project is legion: it required 5,000 tons of ice to
be cut from the nearby lakes and it featured life-sized
sculptures of prospectors and burros, a skating rink
and a “gallery of commerce” with frozen produce, beer
and more. A Crystal Carnival, with parade and
fireworks, lit up the town as well.
It started back in 1860, when gold was discovered in
California Gulch. Eight thousand prospectors soon
arrived, and within five years, more than $4 million in
gold was found using sluice boxes and pan — more
than at any other site in Colorado at the time.
The gold played out, but was quickly followed by the
silver boom. By 1880, Leadville had more than 30,000
residents, innumerable stores, hotels, boarding houses
and, of course, more than 100 saloons, dance halls,
gambling joints and brothels.
An upper class developed alongside the silver boom.
Horace Tabor, who owned a general mercantile store
with his first wife Augusta, invested in mining with
incredible success. He built and opened the lavish
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Tabor Opera House, banks and hotels. Other brilliant
financial careers began in Leadville, too: Charles
Boettcher, David May, the Guggenheims, Marshall
Field, W.B. Daniels, Jesse McDonald and James V.
Dexter are a few. In its heyday Leadville was one of the
most sophisticated and modern cities in the world, and
was even a contender to become Colorado's state
capitol.
Lots of famous figures lived in and visited Leadville.
Margaret “Molly” Brown arrived as a teenager in the
early 1880s, working as a seamstress in a dry goods
store. She married J.J. Brown and became the
“Unsinkable” Molly Brown, survivor of the Titanic.
Marshal Martin Duggan, Texas Jack, Buffalo Bill,
Mining was not the only interest that the nation had in
Leadville. In 1889, Congress established a national fish
hatchery on the east side of Mt. Massive. It’s now the
oldest fish hatchery west of the Mississippi River, with
free tours and access to trails. Families love the new
picnic shelter and playground at this historic site.
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Mining continued, with zinc, lead and copper. The
industry’s last great resurgence came in 1918 with the
opening of the massive Climax Molybdenum Mine
north of Leadville, now once again in operation,
supplying the world with molybdenum for
manufacturing.
In 1942, Camp Hale was established 17 miles north of
Leadville as a training site for ski troopers for the 10th
Mountain Division of the U.S. Army. During training,
Leadville was a slice of civility for troops on leave. After
World War II, many of these ski troopers returned to
the state and were instrumental in the development of
the Colorado ski industry. Following the war, Ski