A Visit to the Tabor House in Leadville, Co. June 18, 2018
We left Denver at 7am and headed to Leadville, Colorado. I had a 10am appointment with the executive director of the Tabor Opera House. Normally a two-hour trip, we planned on an extra hour for sightseeing, stopping several times along the way for “scenic overlooks” and “points of interest.” As we left Denver, overcast skies turned into puffy clouds scattered across brilliant blue skies.
One of our stops was in the town of Frisco. The name rang a bell and I soon realized that it was because Thomas G. Moses mentioned the town during his 1884 sketching trip to Colorado. This was his trip with tree other scenic artists to see the mountains.
Frisco is situated on the shores of Lake Dillon, seventy miles west of Denver. Henry Recen founded the town after a mining boom in the 1870s and soon boasted two railroads, many businesses, hotels, and saloons. The town was the center of mining activity because of the railroads and a stagecoach stop, serving as the gateway to the towns and mines in Ten Mile Canyon. It later became the sleepy little town that Moses encountered during his 1884 sketching trip. Of Frisco, Moses wrote, “We soon came to a little cemetery. One rough head-board had the following epitaph, printed with black letters: ‘Here lies the body of John Sands. A Frisco miner, an honest man and an old timer.’ No dates nor age. Near by was the small town of Frisco, which at one time was a prosperous mining town of about three thousand inhabitants. The mines gave out, no one stayed, and homes and stores were left to the elements. As we struck the main street we looked about, but we couldn’t see a living thing, excepting a few chickens which convinced us, however, that someone must have stayed. The feeling we had among the deserted homes and stores was rater uncanny. The buildings had been hastily built; all very rough, and very few of them had been painted. The signboards were a hot, badly spelled and very typical of a frontier mining town; a regular mushroom town – it grew over night.”
After enjoying the bustling town, getting the contact for the city historian and walking about the marina, we headed to the Tabor Opera House in Leadville for our 10am meeting. I had asked Ziska Childs to join me on this particular adventure and we spent the morning looking at historic scenery produced by Kansas City Scenic Company. The drops are suspended by a hemp system – no counterweights or sand bags. As at the Brown Grand Opera House in Concordia, Kansas, the drops are raised and lowered by an individual pulling the full weight on the three ropes that are connected to the drop’s top batten. I was fortunate to help at one point and able to examine the pin rail and rigging. While assisting with one line, I was delighted to discover that the original paint frame that was still suspended from one of the lines. No, we didn’t lower it. I was told that it takes three men to handle the lines when either raising or lowering it!
The four historic scenes at the Tabor Opera House include a drop curtain, a garden drop, a landscape and a street scene by Kansas City Scenic.
There are other historic scenery pieces along the back wall tat were too buried to uncovered. There area also older roll drops, wings, and profile pieces are stored in the attic for both this stage and the previous stage before the Elks altered the building in 1901. Unrolling a few backdrops will be part of my morning adventures today. The Executive director explained that the scenery has been rolled up for over a century. I am curious to see what the original 1879 scenery in the attic looks like from the original stage.
The existing fly drops above the Tabor Opera House stage were produced by Kansas City Scenic. Lemuel L. Graham (1845-1914), a previous employee of Sosman & Landis, as well as one-time business partner of Thomas G. Moses founded this studio. Moses left the Sosman & Landis studio during May 1882 to partner with Graham. That year Moses recorded that while they were working on the Redmond Opera House project in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Graham boarded at a hotel and fell in love with the head waitress, eventually marrying her. Moses wrote, “she proved to be a good wife and good mother.” Moses wrote that Graham “was a regular Shylock, a good fellow and a hard worker, but altogether too close to please me.”
The partnership of Moses & Graham only lasted a little over a year. In 1883 they returned to the Sosman & Landis studio. After Moses and Landis encountered each other while bidding on the same job, they rode the train back together for Chicago. Sosman met them at the station and the three discussed a possible return. Sosman & Landis wanted Moses and Graham back, they were each offered $45.00 a week. Moses wired Graham their proposal, but Graham was not so eager to accept and countered “$50.00 and extras.” The studio agreed and on May 1, 1883, Moses and Graham were both painting in the Sosman & Landis studios again. It lasted less than a year for Graham, however, and in 1884, he left Sosman & Landis to form Kansas City Scenic Co.
To be continued…
