14 GEOLOGY AND MINING INDUSTRY OF LEADVILLE. 



played in the transaction. The report of what he had done thus reached the 

 ears of Mr. Tabor's Denver correspondents before he himself arrived to 

 deliver the property, when they not unnaturally declined to receive it, and 

 Mr. Tabor was obliged to keep it himself. He, with his associates, under 

 the title of Tabor, Borden & Co., afterward bought some adjoining claims 

 and developed their ground, from which they are said to have taken out 

 in the neighborhood of $1,500,000, and afterward to have sold their prop- 

 erty to the Chrysolite Company for a like sum. 



In the spring of 1877, under Mr. Meyer's direction, the first smelting 

 furnace was erected at Leadville by the St Louis Smelting and Refining 

 Company, now known as the Harrison Reduction Works, and others fol- 

 lowed in rapid succession. 



Growth of the city. The nucleus of the present city of Leadville consisted 

 of a few log houses scattered along the borders of the California gulch 

 below the Harrison Reduction Works. In the spring of 1877 a petition 

 for a post-office was drawn up by Messrs. Henderson, Meyer, and Wood, 

 which necessitated the adoption of a name for the new town. Mr. Meyer 

 proposed the names of Cerussite and Agassiz, both of which were rejected 

 as being too scientific. Mr. Wood proposed the name of Lead City, to 

 which Henderson objected that it might be confounded with a town of the 

 same name in the Black Hills, and the name of Leadville was finally 

 adopted as a compromise. The rapidity of the growth of this city borders 

 on the marvelous. In the fall of 1877 the population of Leadville was esti- 

 mated at about two hundred persons. The business houses of the town 

 were a 10 by 12 grocery and two saloons. In the spring of 1878 a corpo- 

 ration was formed, which was continued for six weeks, when the town's 

 growth justified its transformation into a city of the second class, Mr. W. 

 H. James being the first mayor and John W. Zollars city treasurer. Within 

 two years Leadville grew to be the second city in the State, with 15,000 

 inhabitants and assessable property of from $8,000,000 to $30,000,000. In 

 1880 it had 28 miles of streets, which were in part lighted by gas at an 

 expense of $5,000 per annum. It had water-works, to supply all the busi- 

 ness portion of the city, having over five miles of pipe laid. It had 13 

 schools, presided over by 16 teachers, and an average attendance of 1,100 



