Horace Austin Warner Tabor

            Leadville is a unique and highest city in the United States. It is about 10,000 feet above sea level. It is in the Rocky Mountains. It is an old city. It has long story. In the late 1890s, there were 40,000 people living in there. There are romantic and glamour stories from the city. The big hotel, Tabor Opera House and saloon are the glamour.

            The story began from a man named H.A.W Tabor. He had a second wife. Her name was Elizabeth  Mc.Cart, known as “ Baby Doe”. Tabor and Baby Doe were the legend of the old west. Horace Austin Warner Tabor was a schoolteacher in Vermont. He went to Homestead in Kansas by covered wagon in 1855. He might be lured by rumors of fortunes in Colorado mines. Few years late he moved to a small Colorado mining camp. It was called California Gulch which he later renamed Leadville when he became its leading citizen.

            Tabor was not a miner. He opened a store. He sold everything. He sold salt, sugar, tobacco and boots. Tabor also supplied “grub” for miners who were looking for ore in return he would get a share in the mine. He got no one found a mine.

            The story started from 1878. Two miners asked for grub but Tabor had stopped supplying it because he spent too much money on it. The two miners insisted to get the grub. In the end, Tabor had seventeen-dollar worth of supply in return he would get a one-third share in the two miners finding.

            The two miners began to dig. After nine days, they struck a rich vein of silver. Tabor bought the shares of the other two men. Finally, he owned 100 % of the mine. It was called Pittsburg Mine. It was worth $1,300,000 in return for seventeen dollars.

            Tabor bought the Matchless Mine for $117,000. It became bigger than Pittsburg. It produced $ 35,000 worth of silver per day. Leadville grew. Tabor became lieutenant governor of the state.

            He met Baby Doe, a girl with blonde curly hair and big blue eyes. He got divorced with his first wife and secretly married Baby Doe. He gave $ 1,200,000 as divorce settlement.  Later he was the United States senator. Tabor and Baby Doe married publicly in a big ceremony in Washington. Mr. Chester A Arthur , President of the United States attended the wedding party.

            Tabor was 53 and Baby Doe was 21. They spend $ 10,000 for honeymoon. Tabor  gave Isabella Diamond for Doe as a wedding gift. He wore $ 250 nightshirt. He and his wife moved to Denver where he built million-dollar opera house.

            In 1893, the United States no longer used silver as coinage. The price of silver was down. Tabor could not afford to run the Matchless Mine. He got bankrupt because he spent all his money in glamour. He had to work as a day laborer while his first wife lived comfortably with $ 1,200,000.

            In 1899, Tabor died. He said to his Doe to reopen the Matchless. Baby Doe did what his husband told her. In 1935, a 73-year-old woman died in the mine.

The story summarized from   Language and life in the USA. Gladys G. Doty, Janet Ross

Happer $ Row , Publisher 1968. 

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