Popular Culture Review Vol. 1, December 1989 | Page 76

the old Comstock, which proved to be a sign o f rich silver carbon
ate. They named the mine “Little Pittsburg” and Tabor’s grubstake
share o f $17 to $64 turned into profits of one half million dollars
before he sold his part of the claim for one million dollars.(16)
Mining was tough at an altitude of over 10,000 feet and one had to
become acclimated to it to do any kind o f day’s work but the the
rewards were worth the tribulations.
W ith his own profits earned from Little Pittsburg, Tabor now
came into possession of the Midas touch and he bought other mines,
parlaying his winnings. His luck was so great that some con men
sold him a worthless mine they had salted with gold dust, only to
rind after Tabor bought it, that a few feet of further diggings brought
him another bonanza.
This was the silver boom of Colorado, and much of it occurred
directly on sites where gold had petered out. The general area
became the great city o f Leadville, and it was Horace Tabor who put
in on the map as each investment brought him bigger profits and the
town greater fame. Unfortunately, his wife, Augusta, who, as
keeper o f a boarding house, had to be penurious for so many years,
could not change her old ways. This no longer befit the wealth of
Tabor, who now belonged to the nouveau riche and he put her aside
by manipulating both civil and ecclesiastical law. He then married
a Catholic divorcee, who in her own way was to become as famous
as he. She was the vivacious Elizabeth McCourt Doe, better known
as Baby Doe. Unlike Augusta, she knew how to spend money and
did. A woman of lavish tastes, she bought sets o f stagecoaches and
horses, both o f whose colors and decorations matched what she was
wearing on any given day. Tabor loved her spendthrift habits and
him self spread the cause of culture by building two opera houses,
one in Leadville and one in Denver. The former, “at the time was
the m ost magnificent structure between St. Louis and San Francisco.”( 17), was built in a record one hundred days at a nearly equal

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