It’s 1893, and Leadville, the richest square mile in America, is teetering on the brink of financial collapse. The country’s monetary standard is shifting from silver to gold, eroding the fiber of this 2-mile-high city.
Barrimore Rockwell, a fictional magnate who in our tale built the railroad line to carry silver ore and passengers from Leadville to Denver, faces bankruptcy. His scheme to rob and even wreck his own train begins with masked bandits on horseback charging the moving cars en route to timberline.
The plot thickens. Mrs. Rockwell creates her own variation of the heist, double-crossing her husband, resulting in “Murder on the Leadville Express.”
You can become one of a cast of characters in a fantasy involving intrigue, deception and murder. Don Victorian costumes and assume a role in a mystery weekend June 3-5 taking place in Leadville’s historic Delaware Hotel and on the Leadville/Colorado & Southern Railroad.
Attend a Victorian masquerade party, celebrating the opening of Leadville’s new rail line. Then, ride the train up Fremont Pass to timberline, fending off masked bandits storming the rail car. You will be in the thick of two murders – one, a shooting on the Leadville Express, the second, a duel in the alley behind the hotel.
Your sleuthing intuition will be put to the test as you help solve these turns of events.
“Murder on the Leadville Express” includes two nights’ lodging at the Delaware Hotel, meals and cocktail parties, a train ride to timberline, professional costumes, an interactive mystery skit and a souvenir gift. Additionally, you can create or assume a character of your own choosing during the mystery weekend. Purchase the entire “weekend to die for” from $317 per person, double occupancy.
The setting for the 1893 murder mystery is a natural. The 120-year-old Delaware Hotel is Leadville’s grand old dame. Its exterior reigns as an architectural cornerstone on the town’s Harrison Avenue. Inside, it’s a return to the graciousness of the late 1880s with period antiques, crystal chandeliers, brass fixtures and oak paneling. Yet the Delaware’s Victorian charm belies that the hotel is replete with modern-day conveniences.
The hotel was where Baby Doe Tabor, a tragic figure, came to warm herself and write letters. Her feet were wrapped in gunnysacks to keep warm as she walked to town from her wooden shack at the Matchless Mine, where she lived and eventually froze to death.
The original Colorado & Southern High Line Railroad ran on a narrow-gauge track (3 feet between the rails) between Leadville and timberline, near the summit of Fremont Pass. Now visitors ride in cars traveling on standard gauge (4 feet, 8 inches) tracks.
What used to carry riches from Leadville-area mines now affords visitors unforgettable views of the Upper Arkansas Valley and the Mosquito and Sawatch mountain ranges.
Lillian Ross is a freelance writer who lives in Howard.
The details
Leadville is about 100 miles west of Denver, via Interstate 70 to exit 195, then south on Colorado 91.
For information or to make reservations for “Murder on the Leadville Express,” call 800-748-2004. Because of the nature of the mystery weekend, online reservations cannot be made. For information about the Delaware Hotel, go to www.delawarehotel.com
