Joseph T O'Connor

North Fork Waterstop Joseph T O'Connor

A railroad (actually 3 railroads in the day) ran through it, but no reasonably passable roads served its people; the land was too high for any crop except hay, but beneath the land's surface lay hundreds of million dollars of gold and silver ores; businesses and entrepreneurs flourished and perished, but the law was notably absent in its towns and camps. Thousands of folk flocked to Leadville, Colorado, and to nearby towns to strike it rich or to prey on their neighbors. This was the setting for the central Colorado mining districts of the silver (and gold) mining era in the late nineteenth century. Here are some tales set in the Leadville and South Park area during that time that draw on the constraints of the time and the raw nature of the place to imagine and describe the fortunes and troubles of some of its real and fictional citizens. In accord with the dates listed by each title, the historical context is close to that published in newspapers of the time and subsequent histories; individual plots all involve fictional characters acting in this context.