People/financier

Elizabeth 'Baby Doe' Tabor

Elizabeth 'Baby Doe' Tabor (1854–1935), financier, from United States. Linked to silver.

The lucky break

Married Horace Tabor in 1883 after his divorce made national headlines.1

The downfall

After Horace died in 1899 she spent about thirty years trying to keep the Matchless mine, living in a shack beside it, mostly flooded and spent.1

Legacy

The subject of films and an opera, and a symbol of the boom and bust of Colorado silver.1

Story cards

Drag to turn the globe

Where next

People

FamilyHorace TaborThe divorce that made national headlines and ruined two reputations.2Rival ofAugusta TaborThe divorce that made Horace Tabor's second marriage a national scandal.1,3

Mines

Worked atLeadvilleThirty years in a shack beside a flooded silver mine.1

Sources

  1. Elizabeth "Baby Doe" Tabor Colorado Encyclopedia
  2. Horace Tabor Colorado Encyclopedia (Colorado Humanities / CU Boulder)
  3. Augusta Tabor Colorado Encyclopedia

Pictures on this page: Horace Austin Warner Tabor - Brady-Handy.jpg, Mathew Benjamin Brady / Levin Corbin Handy (Public domain).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

Keep exploring

Stories with these minerals

Lessons from historyBooms and busts: what mining history shows1859-2025Lessons from historyLucky breaks: the finds that almost did not happen1623-2009History of miningGold fever: the rushes that filled continents1848-1900History of miningUranium: from silver mine waste to the atomic age1789-2025

All mining storiesThe world runs on rockAll mineralsMining by country

Pictures: South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0); Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0); The laboratories of Marie and Pierre Curie, Paris: room where experiments on uranium ore took place. Photograph, ca. 1900., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0).