Area History
By Silvia Pettem
WWW.SILVIAPETTEM.COM

Tabor tried, and failed, to recoup his fortune in our backyards

Colorado history is filled with stories of the flamboyant H.A.W. Tabor, but few people know of his connections with Boulder County and particularly of his last mining venture, within walking distance of most of us in Bar-K.

In the mid-1880s, Tabor was a prominent and wealthy man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Leadville. After he left his first wife Augusta, he served a 30-day interim term as U.S. senator, and, in an extravagant Washington, D. C. wedding, married his mistress, the young and beautiful “Baby Doe.”

At first, life was good for the recently wed couple. Their first daughter Lily was christened in a $15,000 dress. An expensive diamond adorned her diaper pin. The family enjoyed a lavish lifestyle in Denver where residents often spotted them in a coach pulled by four horses in gold harnesses.

Still reaping the wealth of Leadville, Tabor diversified his investments with mahogany timber holdings as well as opera houses in Leadville and Denver. By 1888, he also controlled the Poorman Mining Company in Caribou, west of Nederland.

Soon afterwards, however, his luck began to run out. As the price of silver spiraled downward, anticipated dividends never materialized. By the time daughter Silver Dollar was born, in 1889, the former silver king’s fortune was fading.

When the price of silver crashed, in 1893, Tabor was overextended and deeply in debt. He then worked several mines to try to recoup his fortune. His final attempt was at the Eclipse gold mine, west of Rock Lake, just off the old stage road between Ward and Jamestown.

In the summer of 1897, at the age of 67, Tabor signed a $15,000 promissory note (the equivalent of his baby’s dress) to Winfield Scott Stratton, Cripple Creek’s most prominent mining man.

The Ward newspaper stated, at the time, that Tabor “moved with his family to a little lone cabin on the hillside some four miles from camp [Ward] and began again to work out his fortune in the same pursuit in which he first became famous in the state.”

A reporter noted that Tabor was seen in Ward every few days. Baby Doe, then age 43 and previously pampered with gowns and jewels, had to readjust to the wind and the cold and life without luxuries. Lily and Silver Dollar were 12 and 7 years old.

Tabor never repaid Stratton’s loan. Instead, he spent a discouraging year looking for gold where there was little, if any, to be found. In 1898, Tabor was offered the position of postmaster of Denver. The Ward paper reported, “Since his arrival in Boulder County last summer, the ex-senator has become a familiar figure in Boulder and Ward, and the people take an exceptional pride in his appointment.”

His job did not last long. In 1899, Tabor died from a ruptured appendix. He lay in state in the Capitol building where he was surrounded by mourners and bouquets of flowers.

Baby Doe was left practically penniless. She and her daughters moved to Leadville and lived in a crude cabin next to her last possession, the Matchless Mine. Before long, the girls moved away. In 1935, at the age of 75, Baby Doe was found alone, dressed in rags and frozen to death.

Many books have been written about the Tabors, and even an opera, “The Ballad of Baby Doe.” Yet the family’s year at the Eclipse Mine was only a footnote in their otherwise illustrious lives.

I visited the site many years ago (before moving to Bar-K) and, unfortunately, there’s not much to see. The original mine shaft is filled with branches, and the only nearby cabin may have been a more recent structure than the one lived in by the Tabors. To get there, you need to ask permission to cross the Benedict property. Follow the faint trail of the stage road as it winds along the south side of Rock Lake, and then head west and southwest toward the Lodge of the Pines. If I remember correctly, the Eclipse Mine is about half way.