Mining Their Own Business

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Chlouber and O’Neal seem most proud of a program launched this year that aims to provide each college-bound high school graduate from Lake County High School with a $1,000 scholarship. Usually about half of the 60-or-so Lake County graduates go to college, so they’re looking at about $30,000 a year.

Elliot says that the $1,000-per-student goal is ambitious, but adds, “I don’t know if they’ll make it the first year, but if there’s anyone who can, it’s these folks.”

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People from Austria to Japan, from Florida to Washington, make their way to the 3,000-person town of Leadville each summer for the Leadville Trail 100. But the race was never about making Leadville famous around the world. It was about making sure the people who called Leadville home still had a place to live.

“The total purpose of the race was community,” Chlouber said, “bringing people here to spend money. My passion has never been that the world needs more exercise. It’s that Leadville needs more money. You’ve got your choice if you wanna stay fit, but we want you to come here and spend money.”

If it had failed, people may claim that Chlouber’s solution for saving Leadville was just as desperate as the ice palace—a rash idea devised in the midst of a city’s economic implosion.

But the Leadville Trail 100 didn’t fail. Instead, it prevented the town from melting into the mountainside.

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