Silver Queen: The Fabulous Story of Baby Doe TaborBancroft, Caroline
History
Silver Queen: The Fabulous Story of Baby Doe Tabor
Bancroft, Caroline
Baby Doe, -1935
“It’s all a pack of lies,” I told anyone who asked me about it. But the
story as a whole was more nearly right than I would care to admit
especially considering its sneering tone. Of course, there are many
inaccuracies like referring to Tabor as “Haw” (which no one ever called
him in real life) and some straight geographical and historical
untruths, such as having the Arkansas flow in Clear Creek Valley and
talking of Central City as a collection of shanties when it is all brick
or stone. The author was most unkind to me and talked about my guarding
the mine with a shotgun, when in actuality I have never owned a shotgun
that worked. It is true that I do not like strangers and I have several
ways of dealing with them. If someone knocks, I peek out the corner of
the window (which was once shaded by coarse lace, then burlap and
finally newspapers), lifting just a tiny flap so as to show only one
eye. If they see me and recognize me, I say I’m taking a bath—and I have
been known to give that same answer all day long to a series of callers!
Sometimes I alter my voice and say, “Mrs. Tabor is downtown—I am the
night watchman,” (as I did when Sue Bonnie was making her first efforts
to meet me) and sometimes I just sit as quiet as a mossy stone,
pretending the cabin is uninhabited.
Nevertheless, the author of “Silver Dollar” did me a real service in
bringing me many unseen friends and correspondents all across the United
States. Carloads of people flock up Little Stray Horse Gulch each
summer, seeking a glimpse of me, so many cars that I have renamed that
road My Boulevard!
But I never speak to them or admit them to my cabin except,
occasionally, when they come properly escorted by a Leadville friend.
And when I go to town, I frequent the alleys as much as possible, my
figure dressed in my long, black skirt and coat, my legs shrouded in
burlap and twine and my face hidden by the perennial auto-cap with its
visor and draping veil. I, who used to vaunt my public appearances in
the streets by the most elegant dresses, matched by gay floating-ruffled
parasols and by my liveried brougham and team, now skulk along beside
the garbage cans and refuse.
When the movie “Silver Dollar” had its premiere in Denver late in 1932,
the management approached me with an offer of cash and my expenses to
Denver to be present. “No, I will not go,” I replied firmly. “I can’t
leave the mine.” (Actually I couldn’t bear to see myself and all that I
hold dear maligned.)
“I don’t suppose you’d let us have some ore, then, from the Matchless?
We want to have an historical exhibition in the foyer of everything we
can get that relates to the Tabor mine.”
“Certainly,” I replied. “I’d be delighted. That’s quite different. Tabor
was a great miner and the Matchless is Colorado’s most famous
mine—naturally people will be interested.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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