Year: 1879

A Correspondents Description Of tho
Great Colorado Mining Town.


From the last of the freight camps it is
only a square or two into the busiest part
of Chestnut street, the Bowery of Lead
vile, 1t is evening, and the plank side
walks are so thronged with men that
some are crowded off into the street.
The stores of all kinds seem full, and
trade is brisk. The doors of the gam
bling-hells stand wide open, strains of
music are heard to issue from them, and
streams ofrough-looking men constant
ly pass in and out. A variety theatre oc-
cupies prominent place on the street,
and a long line of men extends from the
ticket-office far down the sidewalk. An
Illuminated muslin sign and highly-col-
ored posters covering the front of the
building tell of the attractions within.
All this is taken in at glance, and forms
tumble more or less complex in the
mind, for the stage-driver, no matter how
slowly his team may have toiled along
during the day, now cracks his whip,
touches up the leaders, and dashes
through the town at brisk trot, or even
at gallop. There is just time enough to
see that Chestnut street is lined with
frame buildings two, three, or even four
stories in height, its architecture being
not unlike that of a hundred other West
ern towns, and that it is full of life and
activity.


| Turning to the left at the head of the
street and passing on one side the neat
brick building owned and occupied by
the Bank of Leadville. and on the other
drinking saloon sacrilegiously called by
its owner The Little Church on the
Corner" the stage passes UP broad,
well-built street-HarrisoH avenue-and
stops before the door of large and at
troutive hotel. The strangers first SEN
sation on arriving in Leadville is one of
surprise at the existence of such a city in
such place. With the memory of the
long, difficult road over the range by
which he has come still fresh in his
every evidence of civilization which he
sees about him and the thousands OF
people who throng the streets can have
been brought here by that Or q longer If
not more difficult route in q single year.


I1eadville is at once city and q min
ing camp. Four streets State and
Main, besides those already mentioned
comprise the former, while the thou
sands of log cabins and board shanties
scattered over an area about a mile
square constitute the latter. The four
business streets have been built up 50
rapidly that in some parts they have q
crude and unfinished appearance. The
sidewalks are not all on the same level,
each man having built that in front of
his store at hei ght that was convenient
for himself, so that rs you pass along
you are repeatedly obliged to 60 up or
down one or two steps. None of the
streets are paved, but several of them
have had foot or eighteen inches Of
broken Stag from the smelling works
carted upon them and covered with
earth, forming a kind of crude macadam
much smoother and firmer than the
natural ground. Log houses have pretty
much disappeared from the principal
business streets, although one large one
still stands on a valuable lot on Harri-
son avenue, and is occupied by a branch
Office of the Colorado State Lottery: an
institution we'll patronized here. With
the exception of IN occasional solitary
tall pine that has been left standing,
enerc are no trees in the city proper, and
probably never will be, as nothing but
pine trees will grow here, and they very
slowly.


When Ieadville irst received its i'm
pctus Chestnut street was the more
popular thoroughfare, and business of
every kind crowded in there. Banks,
stables, gambling houses, grocery, dry
goods and book stores. apothecary shops,
lodging houses, variety theaters, dance
houses and drinking saloons .iostled each
other, and bid against each other for
building sites. AS the city grew and it
became apparent that everything could
not be on one street, some of the larger
mercantile houses moved up upon Harri-
son avenue, which is rapidly becoming
the Broadway Of the city. The 1gam-
bling houses held their grouud, but the
dance houses, one Of the variety theaters
and some Of the other most disreputablc
places of resort went to State street.
Thus by sort of natural selection each
street is gradually forming distinctive
character of its own, which will proba-
bly, become more marked rs the town
grows older. Harrison avenue with
the postoffice, the principal hotel, the
largest dry goods houses and the most
popular restaurants will be the faslliona-
bile thoroughfare, while Chestnut street
will retain the grocery and second-class
trade.


The camp proper is the most interest
Ing and picturesque portion of Leadvillc.
AS til Jusands of fortune hunters rushed
in here last winter and spring they cut
the trees and built their log cabins and
board shanties among the stumps, lay
ing out no streets and taking no pains to
arrange their buildings with. any degree
of regularity. The roads, therefore. that
have since been used wind about in n
most bewildering way to avoid the cabins
and the stumps, and make it rs easy for
Il stranger to lose himself rs in some of
the older parts ofBoston. The camp has
life ofits own almost Independent of the
city. "It has its "hotels " and drinking
saloons, its gambling shops and disrepu-
table houses, and here and there store
with a small, stock Of goods. Men
live here actually rs they do in a camp.
Women are almost unknown, and the
miners do their own cooking over a fire
built on the ground before the door.
Every kind of meat is fried, and the
iare is necessarily coarse and without
much variety. have not been into any
of the cabins, but can imagine that they
are cherries and anything but homelike.
Il. L. White, in Nea0 York Tribune.