Learn the History of Leadville at the Heritage Museum

When Horace Tabor was mayor of Leadville in 1878, he was commissioned to buy a promising claim on Fryer hill. In order to protect this claim, Tabor also bought another claim from another prospector, Chicken Bill Lovell.  However, Chicken Bill tricked Tabor and sold him a salt mine instead called the Chrysolite.  Chicken Bill sunk a discovery shaft in the Chrysolite but didn’t discover any silver. Then when he got tired of digging, he simply dropped some stolen high-grade ores down the shaft to make it seem like a million-dollar prospect. Without delay, he sold the useless hole to Tabor for $40,000. But in the end, Tabor got the last laugh because he kept digging in the Chrysolite shaft. And only ten feet deeper than where Chicken Bill stopped, he found a rich vein of silver ore worth $1,500,000. Which made Tabor  Leadville’s first millionaire and they started calling him “The Silver King”. Only a year later Tabor sold the mine to George Roberts and others for $2,778,000. However, he sold the mine too soon because the new owners uncovered ore reserves that were worth $7,000,000! After selling the Chrysolite, Tabor bought another unproductive mine on Fryer Hill, called the matchless mine, and developed it into another bonanza.

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