Founded in 1878 in the wake of a phenomenal silver strike, Leadville was the quintessential Colorado boomtown—with hopes as high as the surrounding mountains, and vanities to match. It got rich overnight and, just like that, transformed itself from a raw log-cabin camp into a bustling urban center.

Walk down Harrison Avenue today and you can still feel the buzz. Here stands the stately Delaware Hotel, where eastern financiers and mining executives closed on million-dollar deals; there, the elegant Tabor Grand Hotel, favored by visiting lions of the leisure class. The original back bar remains at the old Board of Trade Saloon (known today as the Silver Dollar), then and now a popular gathering place for workingmen and women; the Western Hardware Building, where prospectors once bought their gear, still occupies the corner of Fifth Street; and the former clapboard home of Davis Drug sits, as always, at 601 Harrison. Best of all, the Tabor Opera House—whose stage was graced by the likes of Oscar Wilde and Harry Houdini—has lost none of the glamour of its heyday.

Leadville’s silver mines are long gone, and its population is less than a tenth of what it was during the boom. But a nineteenth-century resident would have little trouble recognizing the place today. The town’s old buildings radiate its past glories—the aura of greatness on the make, of heady days when silver reigned supreme.