Leadville

Entering the cloud city. Altitude 10,152 ft. Leadville. Here on the roof-top of the nation flourished 1877 the most famous silver mining camp in the world. Perhaps 30,000 fortune hunters made this town about 1890 the second largest city of Colorado. Here grew fabulous fortunes - among many that of H.A.W. Tabor.

A gay and cultivated social life, violent labor contests, ambitious projects like the ice palace marked the city. In 1860, gold was discovered nearby in California Gulch but soon exhausted. The miners scattered. Seventeen years later a heavy sand discarded by prospectors as a nuisnace in the pine woods here abouts was found to be silver carbonate.

Westward loom Mount Elbert, Colorado's highest peak, and Mount Massive. The Sawatch (Blue Earth) range to the west and the Mosquito to the east contain several of the loftiest mountains in North America. Healy House and Dexter Cabin State Museum, Harrison Avenue and East Tenth Street, depicts life in Pioneer Leadville.