Historic Leadville Colorado

Leadville began in 1860 when Abe Lee discovered gold in California Gulch. (note: there is another California Gulch down by Silverton CO). This brought in prospectors by the thousands. Fortunes were made overnight. By 1877 silver had been discovered and this was the beginning of the "Silver Kings", including Horace Tabor, David May, J.J. & Margaret Brown (Margaret AKA the unsinkable Molly Brown from the Titanic), and the Guggenheim and the Boettcher families. There are many infamous people that walked the streets of Leadville, gunfighters like Doc Holiday, Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, The Younger gang, Jesse James and other famous people of the time like Harry Houdini, John Phillips Sousa, and others.

Colorado's most famous couple lived here, and theirs is a love triangle story. Horace was born April 6, 1830 in Holland VT. At the age of 19 he left home to work the stone quarries in Mass. and Maine. In Augusta Maine he was hired by Wm. B, Pierce who would soon become his father-in-law. Augusta Pierce was one of 7 daughters and 3 sons born to Wm. Pierce and Lucy Eaton. The Pierce's were a middle class family, and Augusta was considered a fragile child, but was very strong willed.

In 1855 Horace moved to Kansas and became a member of the Immigrant Aid Society, an anti-slavery group, he homesteaded land on Deep Creed in Riley county that is to this day known as Tabor Valley. His hard work and determination got him a seat on the "Free Soil" legislature which sat in defiance of local government during a period of civil unrest. In early 1857 he returned to Maine to marry Augusta Pierce and take her to Kansas. Augusta hated it. There were rattlesnakes and wild Indians to deal with on a regular basis. She was often in tears over the situation. But she made the best of it for the next 2 years until Horace began to hear the stories of gold in Colorado. So in the spring of 1859 they left Kansas with their baby son Maxey. They walked across the plains of Kansas and into Nebraska then to Denver. Horace Tabor said of the walk along the Republican River trail that it was "the acme of barrenness and desolation".