John Scarffe, Central City. “You can be whatever you want to be,” Kathy Swafford, with Legendary Ladies, told about 20 Gilpin County fourth graders in the Central City Council Meeting Room during the Second Annual Student Tour of Central City on May 2, 2019. Barbara J. Thielemann, Main Street Central City Board member, led the tour. 

Swafford was playing the role of famous medical researcher Dr. Florence Sabin, who was born in Central City. Sabin was the first Colorado native to have a statue in Washington D.C. Sabin said she had a hard time finding the statue, because the men in all the other statues are standing, but in Sabin’s statue, she is sitting down and looking into a microscope. 

Sabin was born in Central City on November 9, 1871. Her mother was a school teacher, and the family had no running water. They had to purchase water in barrels. The family moved to Denver in 1875, and Florence and her sister, Mary, attended a boarding school and then attended schools on the east coast.

Florence graduated from Smith College in 1893 and set out to attend a medical school, but most of them didn’t admit women. A group of women affiliated with John Hopkins Medical School worked for the allowance of women. 

She attended school there, graduated and was the first woman on the faculty. She applied to be chair of the school, but she was passed over for a man who had been one of her pupils. Her students opposed her being passed over, and eventually she was promoted to chair.

Before she retired, Dr. Sabin had more than 50 publications to her credit regarding how the body defends against disease. At one event, she sat next to Albert Einstein.

Florence returned to Denver in 1944, and the governor asked her to be on a post war committee to investigate why so many people in the state had health problems and were dying from major diseases such as tuberculosis. Her investigation turned up raw sewage in the rivers that were breeding grounds for these diseases.

She then wrote the Sabin Health Bill and promoted it with the slogan, “Health to Match the Mountains.” In 1947, four bills passed through Congress to clean up the environment, and included a bill requiring pasteurized milk. In two years, deaths from TB had been cut in half.

In addition to the statue in Washington D. C., Dr. Sabin has a building named for her at the University of Colorado Medical School and has a school named for her in Denver. She had 16 honorary degrees from a variety of schools and had traveled to Italy and Germany.

One of the fourth-grade students said she had wanted to be a policeman, but after hearing about Dr. Sabin, she wants to be a scientist. Swafford, who had been a speech language therapist during her career, said, “Girls can do it too.”

The Legendary Ladies, a women’s historical performance organization, promotes the history of women who made unique contributions to the west. Each of the 50 legendary ladies researches the character she is portraying, writes her own script and creates the costume for a professionally, historically accurate performance.

The tour for the Gilpin County fourth graders began in the “T” Parking Lot across from Central City Hall. The students embarked from the yellow school bus at about 9:20 p.m., and after getting settled, met David Forsythe with the Historical Society and Museum director.

Forsythe explained the pile of rocks at the south end of the parking lot. This pile used to be exposed, golden and brown mining tailings, but the Environmental Protection Agency made the city cover them because of health hazards. 

This was waste rock from the mines. The miners would pull out the rock and break it down to get three or four ounces of gold. They would burn it and mix it with mercury. They used stamp mills to crush the rock, and they could have 85 stamps in a mill. 

Forsythe told the students that they must be careful because lots of mining shafts remain. At one point, the ground caved in where they didn’t know a shaft existed.

A train once ran up from Denver to Central City, and a building across the street to the east of the parking lot was once a supply station for the train. The train had to make so many switchbacks, a two-mile distance became four miles. The last train ran in 1941.

The students crossed the street to City Hall, and Forsythe explained the mural on the wall to the south of City Hall. The mural depicts the entire history of Central City beginning with the miners, the fire in 1874, the train and the rest of the history.

In the Central City Council Meeting Room, County Planner Ray Rears explained local government, the City Council and what they do. He said this room belongs to the people. The students wanted to know where they jail is, and Rears explained the old jail was in the Courthouse, which they would visit later.

After Swafford played Dr. Florence Sabin, Rears told the students about the Belvidere Theatre next door. The city wants to turn the vacant building into a community center and theatre with shops and a restaurant.

They would like to add a drop-down screen and create a space for weddings and events. Theilmann added that the Peak to Peak Players and the Peak to Peak Chorale would like to perform there. Estimated cost for the renovations is $5 million.

The Belvidere was an important community center for more than 100 years, Rears said, and it has been vacant for about 20 years. Forsythe explained that in 1874 a fire started on Main Street, probably because of a chimney fire, and then spread up the street to the Teller House, which was made of brick and metal. The fire stopped there. 

Later in their tour, Eric Chin, with the Teller House, said the fire spread up Main Street to the Teller House in six hours, but because the building was made of brick with metal doors, the fire stopped here, The town passed an ordinance that buildings must be made of brick. 

After that, the theatre was built, but it could only hold 475 people, so city residents built the Opera House. Since then the building housed the Fire Department, a dinner theatre and a gymnasium for the school. An attempt at a casino there failed.

The students left City Hall and stopped to see the Belvedere Theater. In downtown Central City, outside vacant buildings, Forsythe explained that in 1991, the casinos started coming in, and the city hoped they would help with the restoration of the business district. 

The city was so run down, the buildings needed renovation. The Easy Street Casino needed a new roof, which was restored, but they left a dip in the building roof to show how bad things had become.

The students walked to the Opera House and played and relaxed in the courtyard. Their assignment was to gather as much history as possible, so the students explored names and history in the courtyard bricks.

Then they met Eric Chin, an employee with the Opera House and Teller House. In the Opera House auditorium, he explained that the Opera House was built in 1878, so it is 141 years old. The city was established because of gold and silver, which was very valuable. 

On May 6, 1859, John Gregory discovered lots of gold. At one point, city founders thought the capital of Colorado would be here, but Denver became the capital. The original Teller House was built in 1872 and was made of brick.

In 1872, they only had stoves and candle power with no electricity. The Teller House was one of the finest hotels between St. Louis and San Francisco, Chin said. It was the first hotel in the area to have flush toilettes. Customers would pay $3 for a small room and $4 for an additional sitting room.

Chin reminded the students that a laborer in Central City would make only 50 cents for a week of work, so local residents weren’t staying here. Rich people would stay here, and the owners were trying to lure in the wealthy people. 

Henry Teller showed up in Central City and found out the schools were segregated. After the school for black students closed down, the students started attending the school for white folks, and the parents got angry. 

Teller, a lawyer, sued the district, and won. Black students were allowed to attend the school.

By 1881, Horace Tabor built the Grand Opera House in Denver. One of the main performances in Central City was plays and Wild West shows put on by touring companies, and they weren’t willing to come up here, Chin said. They had to get here by the Virginia Canyon road, also called the Oh My God Road, and it was very scary.

In 1873, President Grant came to Central City. The city spread silver bars down for him to walk on, but he was in favor of the gold standard and may not have walked on the silver bars. In 1893, the gold standard was passed, and silver was no longer profitable.

The hotel specially purchased a bed like Grant’s bed at the White house, and Grant thought someone was trying to kill him, so he went back down the Oh My God Road and stayed the night in Idaho Springs, Chin said. The Teller House hasn’t been a hotel since 1969, 50 years. 

After visiting the Teller House, the students crossed the street to the historic St. James United Methodist Church. Following lunch, Forsythe took them on a tour of the Gilpin History Museum. 

In the afternoon they met Mike Keeler at the Central City Visitor Center, Michele Rouseau at the Gilpin Arts Gallery, and then Sahari McCormick at the Gilpin County County Court House. The fourth graders were picked up in the Teller Parking Lot at about 2:45 p.m., and each of the two teachers received a bag of goodies for each child.

(Originally published in the May 9, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)