Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
staging a car race with his buddies. The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is still in op-
eration. In additon to giving Colorado Springs a zoo and access to Pikes Peak, he helped
build and promote Colorado tourism as nobody ever had.
Industry was Mary Harris 'Mother 'Jones' foil when she came to Trinidad to join a par-
ticularly contentious miners' strike. She was 82 years old and taking on the Rockefeller
family's Colorado Fuel & Iron. The miners, mostly European immigrants, were evicted
from company homes and erected a tented camp in Ludlow. Jones bonded with them and
led marches through downtown, bringing the national spotlight on Colorado. Eventually
she was arrested and forced into 20 days of solitary confinement while the state militia
stormed and torched the tented camp, killing three miners, two women and 11 children.
The tragedy humiliated the Rockefellers and led to labor law reformation.
When Leadville was fat on silver, local bigwigs built a 90ft-high Ice Palace from blocks of ice. It was
party central for the 1896 social season.
