Matchless Mine

New Status for the Historic Matchless Mine in Leadville

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tabor, cabin

by Faye Golson

Editor’s note: Salida resident Faye Golson describes her efforts to place the famous Matchless Mine on the National Register of Historic Places.

The letter came in the mail not as a complete surprise. Return address – Colorado Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, Denver, CO. “We are pleased to announce the listing of the Matchless Mine on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties. The official designation took place on December 28, 2010 …” The Matchless Mine had been a two-year project for me. This included first working as a team member on the Historic Structures Assessment to determine the condition of the buildings and structures and then preparing the National Register Nomination for the property.

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Reintroducing the Tabors: A Series

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Baby Doe Tabor, 1934.

Part 7: An “afternoon interlude”with Baby Doe

by Francisco A. Rios

Note: This is the last in a series of letters chosen from hundreds from the Tabor Collection at the Colorado Historical Society and cataloged by Dr. Rios, a retired professor from the University of Colorado at Denver.

An exchange of letters in the summer of 1951 between Edgar C. McMechan, Curator of the Colorado History Museum, and Mr. Deck Wilmoth of Tulsa, Oklahoma, induced the latter to write a delightful narrative of an afternoon spent in the company of Mrs. Tabor in the late years of her life. In the same letter he discusses a snap shot that he had taken of Mrs. Tabor in the late winter of 1933 and one photograph of him and Mrs. Tabor together. Mr. Deck wonders if the pictures “have any historical value.”

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Reintroducing the Tabors: A Series

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by Francisco A. Rios

(Editor’s note: Dr. Rios, a retired professor from the University of Colorado at Denver, spent 805 volunteer hours over a span of one year and seven months cataloging hundreds of letters from the Tabor Collection at the Colorado Historical Society (CHS) onto a computer database. Over the next several months we will be reproducing some of these letters as a series with the generous permission of the CHS.)

Why would you, the readers of Colorado Central, want a reintroduction to the Tabors? Can’t many of you recite the Tabor tale of rags-to-riches-to rags by memory, citing chapter and verse? Haven’t scores of you been up to Fryer Hill and seen Horace’s Matchless Mine and Baby Doe’s cabin? Is there more to say about the Tabors?

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