Mining Their Own Business

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How a mining town survived a mining bust with a brutal race, changing the course of history 100 miles at a time.

Photos courtesy of Dan Kapke and the Leadville Trail 100.

Desperation made it seem like a good idea.

Desperation made people in Leadville, Colo., think that they could save their town by constructing a 58,000-square-foot ice palace – literally, a palace of ice. Desperation spurred them to include a skating rink, restaurant and dance floor right inside the Disney-looking castle so that tourists and their dollars would flood Leadville.

If the Leadville Ice Palace was anything, it was desperate. But hey, in 1895, so was Leadville.

Emerging after the Colorado gold strikes of the early 1860s, Leadville’s identity had always been tied to mining. Gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper saturated the surrounding mountains, and a booming mining industry sprouted.

By 1880, though, the mines began to dry out. The town’s economy—which was essentially mining—came to a halt. Stores and banks went under, and by 1895 the population was less than 15,000, down from more than 40,000 in 1880.

Leadville’s newspaper, the Herald Democrat, wrote, “Those were the days of panic and gloom for Leadville. Ruin and bankruptcy stared every mining man, every smelting man and every businessman in the face.”    

And this led to the ice palace. People were desperately optimistic that the tourists who came to see it would save the town’s floundering economy. But the imposing, record-setting palace didn’t work out. Investors ended up losing lots of money, and there would never be another Leadville Ice Palace.

Designed for economic stimulation, it was an economic disaster.

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So forgive Carl Miller if he thought his best friend, Ken Chlouber, was nuts. With Leadville’s economy again faltering after a mining bust, Chlouber’s plan reeked of desperation, destined to become another ice palace.

Chlouber’s idea: Leadville should host a 100-mile run. That’s about four marathons – at once.

The logistics of Chlouber’s proposed trail were nearly as outrageous as the dimensions of the ice palace. Runners would snake 50 miles through the mountains to the ghost town of Winfield—a ghost town because of a post-boom bust. The starting point would be in downtown Leadville—above 10,000 feet—and runners would have to conquer the 12,600-foot Hope Pass twice, not to mention more than 15,000 feet of vertical elevation gain. They would embark on this journey (to the sound of a shotgun) at 4 a.m. and, if things went well, would be done 28-or-so hours later.

Chlouber was reduced to such a desperate (and, most people thought, stupid) scheme because Leadville once again couldn’t mine. After 64 years of production, the nearby Climax Molybdenum Mine shut down in 1982. The Climax mine employed 3,200 people, and most of them lived in Leadville—including Chlouber and Miller.

Almost overnight, Leadville had the highest unemployment rate in the country.