Baby Doe Tabor

The story of Baby Doe Tabor has seduced America for more than a century. Long before her body was found frozen in a Leadville shack near the Matchless Mine, Elizabeth McCourt “Baby Doe” Tabor was the stuff of legend. The stunning divorcée married Colorado’s wealthiest mining magnate and became the “Silver Queen of the West.” Blessed with two daughters, Horace and Baby Doe mesmerized the world with their wealth and extravagance. But Baby Doe’s life was also a morality play. Almost overnight, the Tabors’ wealth disappeared when depression struck in 1893. Horace died six years later. According to the legend, one daughter left home never to return; the other died horribly. For thirty-five years, Baby Doe, who was considered mad, lived in solitude high in the Colorado Rockies. Baby Doe Tabor left a record of her madness in a set of writings she called her “Dreams and Visions.” These were discovered after her death but never studied in detail—until now. Author Judy Nolte Temple retells Lizzie’s story with greater accuracy than any previous biographer and reveals a story more heartbreaking than the legend, giving voice to the woman behind the myth.

This is a fascinating autobiography of Baby Doe Tabor, the second wife of pioneer Colorado businessman Horace Tabor, whose rags-to-riches and back to rags again story made her a well-known figure in her own day, and at one time hailed as the “best dressed woman in the West.” It was during Baby Doe’s final years of her life living in a shack on the site of the Matchless Mine, enduring great poverty, solitude, and repentance, that fellow Coloradan Caroline Bancroft met Baby Doe, who had known Bancroft’s father for many years, and became fascinated by her “smile, the manner, the voice and the flowery speech [...] despite her diminutive size.” Following Tabor’s death in the Matchless Mine cabin on March 7, 1935, Bancroft was commissioned to write her biography, her greatest source of information provided by Sue Bonnie, who had discovered Tabor’s body. This book, originally published in 1955, is the result: “Baby Doe Tabor tells us of her life in nearly her own words—many she actually used in talking to Sue Bonnie and others I have imagined as consonant with her character and the facts of her story.”

The Silver Baron's Wife traces the rags-to-riches-to-rags life of Colorado's Baby Doe Tabor (Lizzie). This fascinating heroine worked in the silver mines and had two scandalous marriages, one to a philandering opium addict and one to a Senator and silver baron worth $24 million in the late 19th century. A divorcee shunned by Denver society, Lizzie raised two daughters in a villa where 100 peacocks roamed the lawns, entertained Sarah Bernhardt when the actress performed at Tabor's Opera House, and after her second husband's death, moved to a one-room shack at the Matchless Mine in Leadville. She lived the last 35 years of her life there, writing down thousands of her dreams and noting visitations of spirits on her calendar. Hers is the tale of a fiercely independent woman who bucked all social expectations by working where 19thcentury women didn't work, becoming the key figure in one of the West's most scandalous love triangles, and, after a devastating stock market crash destroyed Tabor's vast fortune, living in eccentric isolation at the Matchless Mine. An earlier version of this novel won the PEN/New England Discovery Award in Fiction."

The laws of survival always trump the rules of etiquette. Every age has its iconic blonde bombshell. In the 1880s, it's Baby Doe, America's original gold digger. At a time when genteel ladies could politely starve to death, Baby Doe seeks her fortune the best way she knows how-marrying a rich man. She joins the rush to the Colorado silver bonanza and meets millionaire mine owner Horace Tabor. Baby Doe enjoys the high life as his paramour, but Tabor's wife and his business manager plot to get rid of the new girl. Baby Doe, however, has schemes of her own to upend Horace's old relationships and become the one and only Mrs. Tabor. But fate sweeps in and avalanches Baby Doe's dreams. What price will she pay for becoming The Mrs. Tabor? Based on a true story, The Mrs. Tabor seduces with a scandalous tale of love and fortunes found and lost.

The Colorado Women's Hall of Fame was founded in 1985, by a group of women who were concerned that both historic and contemporary women who shared foresight, vision, enthusiasm, and the power of accomplishment were not receiving appropriate acknowledgment. Fearful that splendid achievements would be forgotten, they wished to honor women who, during their lifetime, made a significant contribution to Colorado as a state or territory. It is the hope of the founders that by so honoring Colorado's women of consequence, their spirits might inspire future generations.In the first decade since the founding, fifty-nine women were selected for induction. Although historians habitually ignored the vital part that women played in the building of the West, in actuality these women's lives contain plots and characters that would enliven the most gripping novels. We have saints, like Frances Wisebart Jacobs and the theatrical angel Helen Bonfils; activists such as Josephine Roche and Rachel Noel; a scientific genius in Florence Sabin; and visionaries like Dana Crawford. There are tragedies, as with the Tabor wives, and the lighter-hearted tales of Mary Elitch Long and Mary Coyle Chase.Women of Consequence provides a bonanza of role models who opened new frontiers for women in so many fields, including business, journalism and newspaper publishing, science and medicine, law, politics, education, charity work, botany and even taxidermy. These stories are sure to inspire, delight, and instruct readers throughout Colorado, from young adults to senior citizens, whether they've lived here all their lives or moved here recently.

Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt was born in 1854 in Wisconsin. She moved west, married a man named Harvey Doe, and came to be called "Baby" by the miners in Central City, Colorado. After attracting the attention of wealthy Horace Tabor of Leadville, she began a very public affair with Tabor ending with marriage in a private ceremony in 1882. A lavish lifestyle ended after fifteen years with loss of the Tabor fortune in the Silver Crash and Horace's death in 1899. Baby Doe spent the last thirty-five years of her life in a small cabin outside the Matchless Mine in Leadville.

The passionate, compelling and magnificently authentic story of the first woman in the camps of the Colorado silver mines, and how her strength and courage helped her endure through one of the biggest scandals of the time.

Have you ever seen a manhole cover with little glass circles in it and wondered why it was different from the others? Did you ever imagine that there were actually tunnels under the sidewalks? You'll be surprised to find out how many cities in Colorado had these tunnels. And they're still under our streets Those manhole covers imbedded with glass circles, many that have turned purple with age, allowed light into the tunnels below. The Tunnels Under Our Feet explores these tunnels, or what's left of them, with lively prose and interesting historical stories. Join the author on her dusty yet exciting adventures as she crawls through basements dodging spiderwebs looking for tunnel entrances, many of which are now fi lled in. But it's not hard to speculate where they go if you're diligent enough to follow the trail.

Silver Dollar Tabor, daughter of Senator H. A. W. and Baby Doe Tabor, describes her life after her father's silver mines became worthless and the wealthy family suddenly became poor.