Colorado’s legendary 19th century “Silver King” Horace Austin Tabor made a fortune mining silver in Leadville, Colorado. Then he lost it all with his mistress-turned-wife, Baby Doe, at his side.
Articles, books, and even an opera — “The Ballad of Baby Doe” — explore the Tabors’ rise and fall. Few accounts, though, mention a little-known chapter in their lives. In a final attempt to recoup his losses, Horace moved his wife and two young daughters to western Boulder County, where he hoped to rebuild his wealth, this time with gold.
Originally a stone cutter from Vermont, Horace and his first wife, Augusta, headed west during Colorado’s gold rush in 1859. After Horace struck it rich, he divorced Augusta. Then, in 1883, he married the much-younger Lizzie Bonduel “Baby Doe” McCourt in an extravagant Washington, D.C., wedding while serving a 30-day interim term as a U.S. senator.
In the early years of their marriage, life was good for the recently wed couple. Baby Doe gave birth to their first daughter, Elizabeth Bonduel “Lily” Tabor, in 1884. The baby was christened in a $15,000 dress, and an expensive diamond adorned her diaper pin. The family split their time between Leadville and Denver where, in both places, they enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. Residents often spotted them in their coach with four horses in gold harnesses.
The couple’s second daughter, Rose Mary Echo “Silver Dollar” Tabor, was born in 1889. Still reaping the wealth of Leadville, Horace diversified his mining interests with timber holdings, opera houses, and additional mines, including the Poorman Mine in Caribou, west of Nederland. That, too, was a silver mine. When the federal government repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893, the market for silver collapsed.
The Tabors’ fortune faded, and Horace became overextended and deeply in debt. Sources vary, but in 1897 (when Horace was 67), he supposedly turned to his old friend, Winfield Scott Stratton, for a loan. Stratton had made his fortune mining gold in Cripple Creek, Colorado.
Horace, Baby Doe, and daughters Lily and Silver Dollar moved into a cabin four miles north of the Boulder County town of Ward. There, Horace hoped to discover gold in the little-known Eclipse Mine.
At the time, a Ward newspaper reporter wrote, “Tabor moved with his family to a little lone cabin on the hillside some four miles from camp [Ward] and began again to work out his fortune in the same pursuit in which he first became famous in the state.” The reporter added, “The ex-senator has become a familiar figure in Boulder and Ward.”
Baby Doe, then 43, had to learn to live without gowns and jewels. Although newspaper reports mentioned Lily (age 12) and Silver Dollar (age 7), there are no known accounts that described how they might have adjusted to rustic mountain living.
Horace spent a discouraging year at the mine but did not find much gold. Then, in January 1898, he was offered, and accepted, the position of postmaster of Denver. He started work in February and stated that his family would remain at the Eclipse Mine and he would return often to visit them. The narrow-gauge Colorado & Northwestern Railroad first steamed into Ward in June 1898, facilitating Horace’s visits from Denver.
Horace’s job lasted slightly more than a year. On April 10, 1899, he died from appendicitis. He lay in state in the Capitol building, where mourners arrived with bouquets of flowers. Baby Doe was left practically penniless and lived out her life in another mountain cabin next to her then-only last possession — the Matchless Mine — east of Leadville. She was found there, frozen to death, in 1935.
Silver Dollar turned to drugs and alcohol and, as one reporter wrote, was “the heroine of post-Volstead gayety on Chicago’s synthetic south side.” She died in Chicago in 1925 under what were described as “suspicious circumstances.”
Lily, as a teenager, moved in with relatives in Wisconsin, quietly married, and severed all ties with her mother and sister.
The Eclipse Mine was never patented, nor did it produce any significant amount of gold. It’s on private property. No structures remain, and it has long been forgotten. And what of Horace’s first wife, Augusta? As a respected Denver businesswoman and philanthropist, she did quite well and became a millionaire.
