- Certain individuals
in Colorado history have held celebrity status,
with the masses following their every move. Perhaps the most famous are
the Tabors, the last century's most famous love triangle. Hi, I'm John Ferrugia. The silver baron, Horace
Tabor, his first wife Augusta, and the woman he left
her for, Baby Doe, provide a timeless story of
ambition, love, opulence, and loss. And now, "Colorado
Experience, the Tabors". - The legend of
Horace Tabor, which is inextricably tied
to his first wife Augusta and his
second wife Baby Doe, was a huge scandal in Colorado. - They were silver kings, rich
with silver back in the 1800s. - A perfect rags to
riches back to rags story. - They bring together
threads of instant wealth and economic collapse of boom
and of silver tycoons and love and sex and betrayal,
and all of the stories they make for a Colorado epic. - There's drama,
there's exhilaration, there's much ostentatious,
conspicuous consumption. But then there's this
very intense human misery. - Horace and Baby Doe
Tabor were the Kardashians of the gilded age. - This program was funded by
the History Colorado State Historical Fund. - Supporting projects
throughout the state to preserve, protect,
and interpret Colorado's architectural and
archaeological treasures. History Colorado
State Historical fund. Create the future,
honor the past. - With support from the
Denver Public Library History Colorado. With additional funding
and support from these fine organizations, and
viewers like you. Thank you. [music playing] - Colorado's first
great age of glory was the silver era between
the 1870s and 1893, where for about 15
years, it seemed like everything was possible. Where vast, unimaginable
amounts of silvery wealth were flowing out of
the Rocky Mountains and enriching people in Denver
and throughout Colorado. And the Tabors were the
epitome of the gaudy, Gilded Age silver tycoons. - Horace Tabor was
originally born in Holland, Vermont in 1830. He was trained as
a stone cutter. - Known as Haw to his friends. H-A-W. That was his initials. Horace Austin Warner Tabor. - And he was invited by the New
England Immigrant Aid Society to homestead in Kansas as
an anti-slavery advocate. But he maintained
connections with New England, and for a while and he worked
as a stone cutter for a quarry owner in Maine. And he met and fell in love with
the quarry owner's daughter, Augusta Pierce. And Horace and Augusta got
married and moved to Kansas to start a homestead. - In the fall of
1857, she had a son. - And his name was Maxey. - In 1859, Horace Tabor heard
the rumors of gold discoveries in what was then known
as the Pikes Peak region. Horace and Augusta Tabor
moved to Colorado 1859. They were among the
original pioneers. - So here it comes to
Colorado looking for gold. He went to several places--
Central City, Canyon City. They moved to Oro City, which became Leadville,
searching for gold. They don't find very
much gold, but there was this black dirt in the ore. And that was soon to be
discovered as silver. - When he first got
here, he was a miner just like everybody else. But then he found they made
more money in the general store that he set up for
his wife to run. - There were probably
only a handful of women that participated
in the 1859 gold rush. She cooked, she boarded
people, she nursed people. She was described as
an angel of mercy, and she and Horace
made a good team. In 1863, Horace
became post master, and their net worth was $13,000. That would be about $3.5
million of today's dollars. So they were doing well. He was very popular, well-known,
and well-liked person. - In 1877, the Taborship
really came in. Horace Tabor loaned some mining
equipment to two silver miners. - A grubstake is where the guy
with the goods, the merchant, gives them to a miner
with the agreement if you find something,
I get part of it, usually a percentage. And you can keep coming back
for more supplies, as long as you're working with me. The downside of a grubstake
is if you don't find anything, you don't owe me anything. That's the part of that deal
that Augusta just hated. She was constantly on
Horace to quit doing this. - And the miners who Tabor
had loaned equipment to found one of the richest
silver mines in the Leadville vicinity, what became known
as the Little Pittsburgh Mine. It was worth
millions of dollars. And Horace Tabor's
share of that was easily in the neighborhood
of $10 million. Over a couple of burrow
loads of mining equipment. Not bad. In a way, though,
Tabor's success was very much like
winning the lottery. He had been gambling, and
speculated on something like this happening. And after 20 years,
it finally did. But here's the crazy
thing-- almost immediately, Tabor made a new loan
to other prospectors and won the lottery begins. This time with
the mine was known as the Chrysolite, that was
easily as rich as the Little Pittsburgh. And if that wasn't enough,
he struck it a third time with the Matchless mine. So within two years,
the Tabors catapulted from being a modestly
successful mountain family to be the richest mining
tycoons in Colorado. - Tabor, as the
wealthiest man in Colorado and possibly the wealthiest man
in the Western United States, was very influential. And as Colorado moved from
territory to statehood, he was also prominent in
the politics of that time. Horace was elected the
first mayor of Leadville. And within a year
of that in 1879, he was elected the lieutenant
governor of Colorado. - Just when life
should have gotten more restful, more
rewarding for them, things fall apart between them. - Horace was a dreamer. He was a speculator. He was a very hard worker. But most of his
business enterprises were speculative enterprises,
prospecting is a gamble. - He was very flamboyant. We liked to spend money. He like the company of
attractive young women. - He would buy
drinks for everybody. He would put on shows. And the Tabor Opera House
was just a way for him to continue that lifestyle. Horace Tabor loved to entertain. He would have a bar downstairs
just for his own people that would come through the doors. He had the catwalk to
the Clarion next door. That was just a
private way for men to move about without being
seen down in the lobby. - Well, Horace and
Augusta were basically two different personalities. They were the same as
far as hardworking, let's become successful. He liked having all the
money, and he liked gambling, and he liked being
popular in town. Horace like to
all the attention. Augusta didn't
really care for it. Wasn't her style. She was more salt of the
earth, hardworking woman. - Very quiet, very reserved. She wasn't happy with Horace's
extravagant lifestyle. She didn't like to entertain. Augusta Tabor was more
disciplined in many respects, and she I think unfairly a
reputation as being somewhat stingy and a penny
pincher and a nag. But the truth was, somebody
had to bring in Horace Tabor's compulsive speculations. - He didn't have to be the
steadier character, because she had a steady character. - Well, Augusta Tabor was
quite the businesswoman. She actually did all
the books for Horace. - Augusta was very
plain, very practical. She thought money was a tool,
and it to be used for security. - Denver Society was a
conservative society. And the women who
made up the highest level of Denver social
elite had come up from the bottom like the Tabors. Augusta Tabor really
fit into Denver society. - They would have fights over
the money, with Augusta saying, look Horace, we have
plenty of money. We're rich. Millions. We need to diversify. Put it into other things
for long term security. He would always counter
with woman, silver is king. Silver will always be king. Nothing can change that. - Horace and
Augusta Tabor really after 1880 began to live apart,
presume two different kinds of lifestyles as
mining millionaires. Augusta continued to
live somewhat modestly in a mansion in Denver. Horace began taking
up with a faster set. He took up residence
at the Windsor hotel, the finest hotel in
Denver up to that point, where he began entertaining
a series of mistresses. - Elizabeth Bonduel
McCourt was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1854. Her father was a
successful businessman. He was a merchant. And he also ran
several theaters. She grew up in a
prosperous family. - She was the Bell of the ball. She was also a little
bit of a tomboy. She ran footraces against
the boys and beat them. So she had a little
bit of a reputation there as being a
little bit wild. But she was very pretty. Unfortunately, in 1875, there
was a huge fire in Wisconsin. It burned down half the forest
in the state, the family mansion, and the
family business. At this point,
Elizabeth realized she did not like being poor. So she wrangled a wedding with
the banker's son Harvey Doe. - And for a wedding
present, his father decided to send them
to Colorado to run his mines in Central City. - She got her name Baby Doe
supposedly from the miners there, because she was a very
pretty young lady, a baby, and they called her Baby Doe
because that was her last name. Elizabeth Doe was by the
standards of Victorian era an extremely beautiful woman. Somewhat round and plump, with
very tight reddish blond curls, huge blue eyes. She kind of got that image of
an innocent fawn, a baby doe. And that was the name
that stuck with her through the rest of her life. - She was very attractive,
but she knew it. She was ambitious and wanting
to be extravagant lifestyle. - Flamboyant, very outgoing. Liked the finer things in life. - But fortunes did
not favor Harvey Doe. The rich mines that he began
working on very quickly petered out. Elizabeth herself actually began
working in the mines as a miner in order to make ends meat. - She worked
topside at the mine. She never went down in the mine. If she had, all the miner
would have packed up and gone somewhere else. - And the strain
of their decline very quickly estranged
Harvey and Elizabeth. Both of them by 1879, although
they were still married, were having affairs
with other people. And by 1879 to 1880,
the Doe's divorced. She was a flirt. She was fairly open
about sexual relations. And when things fell
apart with Harvey Doe, she very quickly
took up with a number of lovers, who saw the
advantages of her beauty and having a beautiful
companion by their side. Baby Doe gained the
reputation of a gold digger, that she was trying
to sleep or way up. And whether or not that's true,
sometime by about 1879 or 1880, she attracted the attention
of the richest silver king in Colorado. - One night at dinner,
she was introduced to this fine gentleman by
the name of Horace Tabor. They had dinner. She originally went there
to ask him for a loan. But very quickly,
that relationship became a love affair. I don't think she ever had
to pay back the $5,000. - The age difference
was rather extreme, it was about 25 years difference. - Baby Doe was 26 and Horace
Tabor was 51 when they met. For more perspective,
Horace Tabor's son was a year older than Baby Doe. - So there was a
catwalk from the opera house to the Clarendon
hotel that was next door. It was said that
they would visit each other via the catwalk. Horace and Lizzy's relationship
was one of great love. She adored him,
as he adored her. - In those days, gentleman will
often keep ladies on the side. And wives sometimes
look the other way. And Augusta may very well
have looked the other way. She didn't want a divorce. - By about 1880, Horace had
put Baby Doe up in a suite at the Windsor Hotel,
a fabulous hotel suite that reflected
on her status as the mistress of the
richest man in Colorado. - She would put up with
his poor hygiene habits. It was fairly well known that
Mr. Tabor took a bath once every two years. He had an odor about
him, I understand. She tolerated his poor hygiene. But when the story got out,
it had two major effects. Number one, it made
Augusta very sad. She had one meeting
with Baby Doe. She was going to confront
her or something. But when she saw this lovely
woman, she was somewhat cowed. They had a very
short conversation, and she left realizing
she could not compete. The second effect, it
destroyed his political career. The backlash from the
affair was horrendous. - By 1880 and 1881,
Horace and Augusta Tabor were so estranged
that Horace no longer wanted to be with Augusta. He would rather be with
the incomparable Baby Doe. In about 1881, Horace secretly
arranged for a divorce from Augusta. He didn't notify her of the
divorce, but went to a court in Durango and got the court
to issue divorce papers. And amazingly, Augusta
contested the divorce. She wrote him a
long letter said, we have spent so
many years together. We have toiled together
and sacrificed together. We've always been
partners, and I don't understand
why you would want to give up on the
successful relationship that we've built over
these many years. But ultimately, a
divorce was granted. When Augusta was asked to
sign the divorce papers, she signed them, and then wrote
underneath, not willingly. At the time of the divorce, Tab
was worth over $9 million. Unfortunately, Colorado
law at that time had no provisions for
alimony or spousal support. She got two buildings,
the Tabor mansion that she was already living
in and the Levita Apartments. And she started making
money from this. She started a school for girls
at one end of the mansion and took in boarders at the
other end of the mansion. When she made enough
money, she reinvested that in the brand new Singer
Sewing Machine Company and made a fortune. - And Horace took advantage
of is hosting in Washington DC to pull out all the stops in
a lavish wedding for Baby Doe. He bought her as a wedding gift
a $75,000 diamond necklace. He paid for a lavish
silk wedding gown. - He got married in March
1, 1883 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC. He had sent out silver engraved
invitations to everybody to come to the wedding. And United States
senators and congressmen, even president Chester
Arthur came to the ceremony. Although not their wives. - The wives of those
prominent people say no, I will not go to it. Because remember, we're
speaking of a framework where for a women with
major economic ambitions, the marriage to a successful
man, that's the job. That's the profession. And a younger
woman who threatens that way of making a living,
of being a respectable woman married a man of
high achievement and significant resources. And so women have
very disapproving of this older man
walking from his wife who had stuck with him through
the tough times in taking up with this beautiful young thing. And it's just made for gossip. - And what's always
been interesting to me with him knowing the damage
that was being caused is he continued with
the relationship, but actually married her. It wasn't just a trophy wife. - Came back to Denver, built
a house up on Capitol Hill on Sherman Avenue. The entire block
was this one house. Had three carriages. A very plain black
carriage for Mr. Tabor, a big, Cinderella,
gilded, Marie Antoinette carriage for Baby
Doe to go around in, and a small pony
cart for the two girls that were born to them. Elizabeth Lily Tabor was born
nine months after the ceremony, and five years later along came
Rosemary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor. She didn't like all
those first names. A lot of people called her Rose. But she liked to be
called Silver Dollar. - They were very,
very extravagant. They had naked
statues in the yard. The neighbors did not
like the naked statues, so they made them drape them. Their two daughters had
diamond-studded diaper pins. - Baby Doe and Horace Tabor
did not flee visibility. This is what you do. You become rich, and
one of the ways that you make that unmistakable is
you dress your wife up, and build a big mansion,
and you have peacocks. Those are particularly
good, because they are particularly loud. And rich people sometimes
rethink the peacocks, I think, because they're loud
in the mornings. But you experiment
with peacocks. And I'm sure they must be
quite an expensive bird. That is a pretty solid
record of high performance of that couple in the sport
of conspicuous consumption. - Horace made roughly
$10,000 a day. He spent almost as much today. Today that's still insane. By today's numbers, he was
making roughly $2 million a day. - In 1883, I think
was Harper's Magazine said that if Horace continues
to spend the way he is spending, he'll be poor as a
pauper within five years. - Horace's reputation
suffered from his affair and then marriage
to Baby Doe Tabor and his abandonment of Augusta. And Denver society, who
really admired Augusta, turned against
Horace and Baby Doe, and ostracized
them in many ways. But because Horace
was the richest silver king in Colorado,
he and Baby Doe were able to successfully thumb
their noses at Denver society and do the things that
they wanted to do. They shrugged off the slings
and arrows of social judgment. The Tabors were nationally
known as celebrities because of their lavish lifestyle. - Society never really
accepted Baby Doe. And so she didn't accept them. She would just flaunt her
wealth in their faces. They would have $10,000-a-night
parties at the dream house. - The town of Leadville
thought of Baby Doe as sort of a woman
of loose morals, and the other women in town
were jealous of her beauty. So her reputation in
Leadville and Denver wasn't very upstanding. But they continued to spend
lavishly and live the lifestyle as if these mines are
never going to dry up. - Well, it stopped suddenly. It only took six years to
totally bankrupt the guy. - In 1893, the
federal government repealed the Sherman
Silver Purchase Act, ending the practice of
artificially subsidizing silver since the 1870s. As soon as this happened, the
price of silver plummeted. - It spelled the beginning
at the end for Horace Tabor. Was in his 60s by this point. He invested in
riskier operations. He was unable to support
the edifice of debt that he had created. Augusta and Horace's son
Maxey chose not to tie himself to his father's sinking
ship, and so became more separated and
distanced from his father. His debt grew higher and
higher, and by 1896, the Tabors lost their home. They came to turn off
the power, and Baby Doe took her two children
and pretended they were the servants
living in the house. They went down to the community
pump and pumped water. They told stories by candle. She did everything she could
to keep up their spirits, and suggest that this
was only temporary. And one of his friends
owed him a favor, and put him in the position
as postmaster of Denver. But they went from living
in the extravagant, to barely renting a room. - Say what you
will about Baby Doe and her motivations
to connect herself to Horace Taber's fortune, they
were a truly loving couple. Perhaps even unreasonably so. Baby Doe was in her early 40s
when they lost their fortune, and there were other
wealthy men in Denver who would have been more
than happy to invite Baby Doe into their beds. But she refused them. - Horace died of appendicitis
on April 10, 1899 in Denver. Baby Doe was still a
very young, vibrant woman with two young daughters. And she wanted to continue
working the Matchless Mine, because it is said that Horace
told her on his deathbed to hold onto the Matchless. - The legend-- we don't
really believe it-- last seven days of his life
with the poisons from the burst appendix in his body before it
killed him, he was in a coma. And he had sold the mineral
rights of the Matchless to WS Stratton of Cripple Creek
four years earlier for $15,000. - When Horace died, it had a
dramatic effect on Baby Doe's mental prowess, I guess
you would call it. And she became odder
and odder the longer that she lived without him. She came up here and start
living like a hermit. - Lily Tabor was
five years older than her younger sister Silver. They dealt with the collapse
of the Tabor fortune in different ways. Lily by 1901 had decided to
move away from her mother altogether. And in later years, Lily
denied that Baby Doe was even her mother. Silver stuck it out for a little
while, living with her mother Baby Doe in Leadville. But getting in trouble
just like her mother, kicking it up with men of
questionable backgrounds, drinking too much,
and ultimately, Silver moved away as well. She ended up in Chicago, and
became a burlesque dancer and a kept woman, and died
under suspicious circumstances-- scalded to death in a
tenement in Chicago in 1925. - It's really only the last
couple years of her life that she spent in the
cabin, because she really had no other place to go. - There was a grocer on Harrison
Avenue when Baby Doe was living up at the Matchless. She would come down, her
feet wrapped in burlap bags to protect from
the snow and ice. And she'd come down and
write an IOU to this grocer. And he would take
the IOUs knowing this you would never
be able to repay it, even though she
fully intended to. So the people of Leadville, they
loved Baby Doe after everything was all said and done. To help her, they would take
things up to the Matchless and just leave them on the
doorstep and then leave. - She was absolutely penniless. And very often, people would
see her on the streets of Denver along 17th Street in
the business district soliciting what she
called investments in the Matchless Mine. What you really
needed was a handout. She kept a diary. She kept a journal. And she would write
about how little food she was eating, about
her malnutrition. One story goes that she was cut
off from Leadville's city water supply, and so was drinking
water out of the flooded Matchless Mine. And as Colorado declined
in the 1920s and '30s during the Great
Depression, Baby Doe Tabor seemed to be this
physical manifestation of the decline of Colorado from
this silver era into rougher and more hardscrabble times. - She wrote and wrote and
wrote and wrote and wrote, and struggled and struggled
and struggled and did everything a human soul could
do to try to think, what happened to me on this planet? And how can I make sense of it? And what are these
visitations that come to me in the dark of night? And that's where it gets
totally interesting. - And it was hard to tell
where the dream world ended and the waking world began. She left hundreds and hundreds--
more than 2,000 pages-- of what she called her
dreams and visions. There's just a depth
of internal turmoil. Fears for her daughter's. Laments for her lost husband. - We don't know what
happened to her mind. We know that if external
stress brings breakdowns, she certainly had
plenty of that. She had extreme social
scorn addressed to her in the time of prosperity. I have seldom seen anyone
better supplied with reasons to go crazy. There she is living
in an environment where the earth has been
pulled up, stirred around, and all kinds of chemicals
have been brought into play. And lead can change
the brain chemistry. And so we can throw that in. But I also think that
those writings really convey an individuality. Just the way she uses
her evocative words and tries to find patterns in
her experience, in her dreams, and to make those patterns
evident in these little scraps of paper. - Very devoted Catholic woman. I think she lived
the rest of her life out there in penance for
being the other woman. She was in her 80s. I don't think she went mad. I think she was
probably delusional, because of what she was eating
and what she was drinking. - 1935, when she passed
away, she technically had a heart attack. It was during a blizzard. And a neighbor
found her, noticed that there wasn't any smoke
coming out of the chimney, and came to check on her. And he found her frozen body. And that's all over the papers,
Denver papers, national papers. - When she died without a
will, the state of Colorado became the executor
of her estate. Five nuns down in Denver
came forward with the fact that they had stored a bunch
of chests, trunks, and boxes for her in a warehouse
down in Denver for years. There were 17 pieces in all. First chest full of old
newspaper clippings. Second chest old magazines. Another small box was
full of children's toys. But the fourth chest had the
remains of the wedding dress in it. Another box had a complete
silver tea set in it. - It's an American
story in a way, because they came out here to
make money hoping to strike it rich in a new land. - What could we learn
from the Tabors? Not to be so extravagant and
think that it will never end, and be prepared for anything. - Perseverance. Maybe optimism. Certainly from
Augusta, hard work. From Horace and
Elizabeth, we should be more careful with investments. The legacy is the history of the
US from the 1830s to the 1930s. - People become famous
for reasons that are sometimes quite mysterious. There's value in asking,
why are they famous? And more important, the
fact we fixate on them tells us something
about ourselves. What are we saying about our
own curious minds and souls? - And that life is full
of love and success and failure and disappointment
and betrayal and joy, and that's the Tabors at various
periods in their lives together represented all of these. I guess it tells us
that we all need to live our lives on our own terms. That we need to be
comfortable with the choices we make, and accept
the consequences of the decisions that take us
to good times or bad times. But through it all,
what remains constant is love and devotion,
because let's not forget, Horace and Augusta loved each
other deeply for 20 years. And Horace and Baby Doe shared
that same kind of devotion with each other. If nothing else, the saga of
Horace and Augusta and Baby Doe Taber remind us of the love
that we share with people who are important to us.
