May 8, 2018: Downtown Leadville

I love to visit old mining towns because they are a window to the past.  One such place is the city of Leadville, situated high in the Colorado Rockies.  At an elevation of 10,152 feet (3,094 m), Leadville remains the highest incorporated city in the USA.  At this altitude, winters are long and very cold, but that hasn’t stopped Leadville.

While initial prospectors searched the nearby hills for gold in the mid-1800s, it was silver mining the put Leadville on the map.  The town boomed and by the late 19th century it was the second largest city in Colorado, second only to Denver.  

While it’s now a sleepy city living mostly off the tourist trade, that has not always been the case.  The Leadville Historic District contains many lovely old structures from the era of its mining boom.  When you walk the main street in Leadville you have the opportunity to immerse yourself into its past.  You can imagine what it was like when Doc Holliday moved hear after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, or when Molly Brown (the unsinkable Molly Brown — one of the Titanic survivors) lived here, or when Oscar Wilde appeared at the Tabor Opera House.  It must really have been something to see back then!