by Jim Mcinvale

Created on: September 05, 2010

Fifty Hours in Leadville

Leadville doesn’t mind if you come, but don’t look for out-stretched arms. This old Colorado mountain girl has seen too many booms and busts to go gaga over a tourist, and though she’ll accept the patronage, she is okay without it. Her people need less of everything than the rest of us: cash, supplies, and even air, which is sparse above ten thousand feet.. The resident shop owners and artisans don’t mind doing business with you, but they will not pamper you. They’ll be fine with or without your money.

I ride in from the north under a brilliant late morning sun with Jesse, my 13 year old son. Townspeople stop in their tracks to watch us pass and three dark figures, lurking in front of the saloon, follow us with their eyes. I nod and we saunter down Main Street, sitting tall in the seats of our dusty minivan. A kid on a skateboard emerges on the left, texting as he weaves through parked cars, and shatters the western fantasy. I stop at a traffic light and study the the old rooming houses, liveries, and hotels that stand shoulder-to shoulder behind tiered sidewalks flanking the street on either side. The paved road and poured concrete walks are similar in form to the dusty lane and wood-slat structures that sprouted in the 1800’s, and though the buildings, erected for the first  prospectors, have changed faces and enterprises with each passing generation, the adjustments were only cosmetic.

Leadville’s population is an Anglo-Hispanic mix, peppered with an assortment of old freaks, extreme athletes, bikers, and artists. The architecture is best described as evolved frontier, western in style, thrown up quickly, and partially adapted to changes of the last century and a half. Summer has driven the remoteness of this place back into the deep shadows where it will wait out the short season and creep back in with the first freeze of October.          

We turn west on the route that will take us to our camp at the base of the Sawatch mountain range. Low-slung bungalows squat in neat rows just off of Main Street, plain but functional, built in the thirties, forties and fifties for miners. The current owners maintain them as winter-ready and un-pretty as their snow plows and old pick-ups. Further away from town, a few magnificent mountain estates peek through the pines - summer homes built for west coast royals who jet in for the cool, late

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