The madam undertook a good part of the management of the mine herself, sometimes all of it, and was capable of subduing the most obstreperous miner who ever landed there. She was the lady who, to spite her neighbors, built the tall fence around her place in Silverton. They left Silverton about 1904 and, after Stoiber died, the madam erected a fine home in Denver, surrounding it with a fence. She had one husband before Stoiber and two others afterwards but no one knows for sure what became of them. Her last home was a villa in Italy where she died. A large fortune was left behind which is still being handed down to heirs of heirs. Mears signed a contract with the Gold Prince mine at Animas Forks, to haul its ore to Silverton over the winter of 1906-07. Therefore, it was necessary to prepare against the vicious snow slides between Eureka and Animas Forks. He decided to build several heavily timbered snow sheds and anchor them in rock in the hillsides. The first, 500 feet long, at a bad place near the Silver Wing boarding house, not far from Eureka, was completed in October. A slide that winter smashed it and dumped it into the Animas River Canon. Mears gave up on snow sheds. On March 24, 1906 concussion, which is the rush of air at the edges of a slide, did great damage to the Green Mountain mill in Cunningham Gulch and killed the mine foreman. It also destroyed several S. N. cars. At the same time a slide demolished the boarding house at the Shenandoah mine and killed twelve men. Near Animas Forks two men were asleep in the same bed. One was thrown toward the center of the room and carried away while the other was thrown toward the wall and was saved. In the same season two men were killed at the Robert Bonner mine near Burro Bridge on the S. R. These are only samples of slides that happened nearly every winter. Often bodies, frozen stiff, were recovered from slides and stood against the handiest wall. One summer a request came to Silverton for a great quantity of columbines for some national convention that was to be held in Denver. A “Columbine Special” train was run from Silverton to Animas Forks for the purpose of procuring them. Mears donated the use of the train, railroad men donated their services and townspeople donated their time. They gathered what they estimated to be 25,000. A hardware man supplied washtubs in which the flowers were packed and shipped. They went out of Silverton on flat cars but were transferred to box cars at Alamosa. The columbines reached Denver and were displayed in front of the Denver Post building.