Leadville was built fast, rich, and rough. Between 1879 and the turn of the century the town packed in saloons, opera houses, mortuaries, and mines, and it buried a lot of people along the way. The Victorian buildings on Harrison Avenue are still standing. So, according to a good number of locals, is some of what happened inside them.
Here are the stories, and the places you can go stand in while you think about them. October is the obvious month for it, though the buildings do not much care what the calendar says.
Herald Democrat Building
Once a mortuary, the Herald Democrat building now houses the newspaper office, the Alpine Gift Shoppe, and Fire On The Mountain. It has raised the hair on the back of more than one editor’s neck. Footsteps sound when nobody is walking. Lights turn themselves back on at night. The Cloud City Paranormal Society once recorded extreme temperature swings in the basement.
The Herald collected these and other accounts in “Ghostly tales abound in this old mining town”, much of it drawn from their own Herald Democrat reporting from the 1910s.
Where: 717 Harrison Avenue, downtown Leadville
The Delaware Hotel
The Callaway brothers built the Delaware in 1886, and it is the last of Leadville’s grand mining era hotels still standing. Mary Coffey and her husband were renting a room here when it was a boarding house. In 1899 he grew jealous of the attention she was paying a sick friend down the hall and shot her in the back. She is buried in Evergreen Cemetery. Guests and staff have been reporting her presence in the halls ever since.
One visitor’s account is written up in “The Haunting of HeidiTown, Colorado: The Mayor’s Ghost Stories”.
Where: Delaware Hotel, 700 Harrison Avenue
Silver Dollar Saloon
Established in 1879, the Silver Dollar has more than 140 years of Leadville inside its walls. Doc Holliday, Oscar Wilde, and Molly and J.J. Brown all drank here. During Prohibition there were curtained booths in the back and a trap door behind the bar for getting rid of bottles in a hurry.
The decor includes a noose from a local hanging that is said to sway on its own, and a framed photograph with an apparition in it that was taken inside the bar. Staff and regulars have their own stories, and they will usually tell you if you ask.
Where: Silver Dollar Saloon, on Harrison Avenue
Tabor Opera House
Horace Tabor put this building up in 1879 in about 100 days, and it was billed as the finest theatre between St. Louis and San Francisco. John Philip Sousa, Oscar Wilde, and Anna Held all performed on that stage. A building that old, that busy, and that full of trap doors and dressing rooms collects stories, and the Tabor is a standard stop for anyone in town chasing them.
It is currently going through its first major rehabilitation since it was built. Tours and performances continue.
Where: Tabor Opera House, on Harrison Avenue
Evergreen Cemetery
Evergreen Cemetery was established in 1879, and the graves from Leadville’s original city cemetery were moved here. Local lore holds that James Driver’s arm and Mrs. E.J. Burdett’s foot are buried here too, separate from their owners.
The real weight of the place is in the pauper’s section. The Irish Miners’ Memorial honors roughly 1,300 people, predominantly Irish immigrants, buried in unmarked, sunken graves. Close to half were infants and children. The average age at death was 22. A statue of a miner named Liam, made in Ireland and shipped over, kneels before a slab of granite, and glass panels along the path carry the names. It is worth seeing in the evening when the panels are lit.
The cemetery also holds ten miners killed in February 1885 when a snowslide buried their cabin at the Homestake Mine, fifteen miles northwest of town. Their memorial went up the following year.
Where: Off McWethy Drive, just east of the intersection with County Road 4, on Leadville’s northwest side.
The Moyer Mine
The Mineral Belt Trail is an 11.6 mile paved loop around Leadville, good for biking, walking, or skiing depending on the month. It runs right past the site of the Moyer Mine, reportedly the most haunted of Leadville’s lodes.
Accidental deaths gave the Moyer its reputation. Dim light, dripping water, and echoes underground did the rest. In 1901 State Senator Joseph Gallagher went into the mine and a round of powder blew him into the next life. Miners afterward said they saw him wandering the drifts and riding the bucket down the shaft to warn his friends of danger.
Where: Near the 6 mile marker (California Gulch) on the Mineral Belt Trail. You can also drive to the trail’s crossing with Toledo Street.
The Woman At The New Discovery Mine
In 1879 a woman in a fluttering shroud appeared in the New Discovery Mine. She came back often enough that her story ran in a New York newspaper. Plenty of men drew their pay and never went back down. The braver ones tried again and again to catch her, and every time they closed in she spat at them and vanished. She made the New Discovery the first Leadville mine said to be haunted by a woman.
Where: The mine site is a field now, though they say she still keeps to the forbidden chambers below it. Find the site at stop 9A on the Route of the Silver Kings driving tour, a 21 mile loop through the historic mining district.
The Matchless Mine And Baby Doe
Horace Tabor struck it rich at the Matchless Mine and told his second wife, Baby Doe, to hold onto it no matter what. She did. She lived out her last decades in a newspaper-lined shack beside the shaft with her feet wrapped in burlap against the cold, and she was found frozen in that cabin after a blizzard. You can see the headframe, the hoist house, and the cabin itself.
Note: the Matchless is a summer season site and is closed for the winter.
House With The Eye
Built in 1879 for Canadian architect Eugene Robitaille, the House with the Eye is a Victorian home turned museum, and its collection leans dark in the best way. A horse-drawn hearse from the 1890s. Used hangman’s nooses. A Prohibition era whiskey still. A 1925 electric player piano that does what player pianos do.
Note: also a summer season site, closed for the winter.
How To See It All
- Leadville by Lamplight Tours runs guided ghost tours of downtown and of Evergreen Cemetery. Rhone Pretti guides them, carrying on the work of her father, historian Roger Pretti.
- The Downtown Leadville Walking Tour covers more than 30 stops through the National Historic Landmark District. Take it online, or pick up the printed Leadville and Lake County Heritage Guide at the Visitor Center, 460 Harrison Avenue.
- The Route of the Silver Kings is a 14 stop driving tour through the mining district on dirt roads, most passable in a car. It is private land, so respect the signs and stay out of the shafts.
- Healy House and Dexter Cabin gives you the Victorian interiors these stories happened inside of, including objects that belonged to Horace and Augusta Tabor.
- Erin Taylor’s “Haunted Leadville” (Arcadia Publishing) pulls from more than 70 newspaper articles and covers the Delaware, the Tabor, the Matchless, and Evergreen Cemetery.
Plan A Haunted Weekend
October is when the town leans into it. OctoberVille runs all month on Main Street, and the events calendar has the rest.
Find a place to stay, ideally somewhere old. Eat and drink downtown. Start the trip at Plan Your Trip.
Historic photographs courtesy of the Lake County Public Library. Silver Dollar Saloon photo credit @breckmountains.
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