George S. Lee arrived in Hinsdale County from Massachusetts in May, 1877 with ambitious plans for the newly formed Galena Mining District and saw opportunities to invest in Colorado's future. At the time, the two-hundred-acre town site known as Galena City had two stores, several hotels and restaurants, a post office, approximately one hundred houses, and the George B. Greene & Company Smelter. After another Colorado community selected the name Galena, Galena City was renamed Capitol City. In 1879, Lee built a two-story brick house advertised as the Mountain House Hotel, with a formal living room, several guest bedrooms, and a formal ballroom with a glassed-in bay window where tropical plants were grown; Governor F. W. Pitkin was an overnight guest there in 1879. Lee also built a carriage house for his buggy, a brick outhouse said to be the first and only one of its kind in the region, Henson Creek Smelter, Rose Lime Kiln, and a saw and planing mill, and he delivered lumber and shingles to the mines using packjacks, a string of mules used to haul supplies. Lee's holdings became insolvent in 1882 and he relocated to Denver, later moving to New Jersey, where he perfected and patented a number of inventions. His residence, later known as Lee's Mansion and described in 1879 by travel writer Frank Fossett as "the most elegantly furnished house in Southern Colorado," eventually fell into disrepair, gradually collapsed, and its remaining structure was torn down in the 1960s.