“High Drama: Colorado’s Historic Theatres,” by Daniel and Beth R. Barrett (Western Reflections, 208 pages, $19.95)
Inscribed on the curtain of the Tabor Grand Opera House, which once stood at 16th and Arapahoe streets in downtown Denver, were the words
So fleet the works of men/Back to the earth again-/Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.
The sentiment was often used to describe the life of H.A.W. Tabor, the ill-fated silver king who built the opera house. But it might just as well apply to all of Colorado’s opera houses. Of the 14 featured in “High Drama,” only five still stand, and several of them have been converted to inglorious uses.
Theater came to Colorado soon after the 1858 gold rush began. Performances at the Apollo Theatre, located in Larimer Square, were punctuated by shouts from the bar below. Hearty troupers played there, then made the circuit of the mining towns. The first opera house featured in the book, the McClellan, was built in Georgetown in 1869, over a furniture store. Its most dramatic performance might have been the fire that destroyed it in January 1892. As fire hoses froze and the flames took over, Mrs. McClellan was rescued through a third-floor window.
The grandest of all the opera houses probably was the Tabor Grand, built at a cost of $850,000. Charging theatergoers the unheard-of admission price of $2, it brought to Denver the world’s most famous thespians. But personal drama played there, too. Tabor’s wife begged her husband to allow her to attend opening night, but Tabor refused. And it was unseemly that he should escort his mistress, Baby Doe. So the Tabor box was empty. The Tabor reigned for only a decade, giving way to the Broadway Theater, at 17th and Broadway. Later converted to a movie theater, the Tabor was torn down as part of Denver’s urban renewal project.
Many opera houses became movie theaters. The Central City Opera House showed films for 20 years, beginning in 1910, at little profit. Owner Peter McFarlane let poor kids in free. He objected to showing love stories. “The public is getting tired of too much kissing,” he wrote a supplier.
Beth and Daniel Barrett write about the 1940s revival of melodrama at the Imperial Hotel in Cripple Creek. Owners Wayne and Dorothy Mackin first featured hiss-the-villain plays, but later sought out original 19th-century melodramas.
“Homestead: Modern Pioneers Pursuing the Edge of Possibility,” by Jane Kirkpatrick (WaterBrook, 384 pages, $13.99)
Newcomers Jane and Jerry Kirkpatrick considered themselves outsiders on their ranch in remote Oregon. But after surviving an airplane crash and spending time in the hospital, they came home to realize they were part of a community – and a community where rural neighbors looked after each other. While women prepared food, men finished installing irrigation pipes. Without the pipes, the couple couldn’t raise crops, and without crops, they’d loose their ranch.
How could they repay, Jane asked.
“It’s a gift,” a friend replied. “You pass on the pleasure of gifts by enjoying them.”
“Just pass it on,” the friend’s husband said. “That’s how we get along here.”
Kirkpatrick’s story of building a farm at Starvation Point, was first published some years ago. This new edition brings readers up to date on what’s happened with the couple as they’ve settled in and grown older.
The two quit their jobs after acquiring the acreage, which was accessible only by air or a perilous road. Their intention was to grow grapes, although neither had ever farmed before, and Jerry had a bad back. Still, the couple felt called to do this.
“Homestead” is an uplifting book, but Kirkpatrick does not make light of the hardships and the personal turmoil. She tells about Jerry’s son, a one-time drug user who occasionally backslides. And she writes about the despair and harsh work of digging sagebrush and fighting rattlesnakes. The difficulties were outweighed by the challenge and sense of accomplishment of making a home in the wilderness and becoming part of a far-flung community of neighbors, whose care for and dependence on each other brings to mind a network of 19th-century homesteaders.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver novelist who writes monthly about new regional nonfiction.
