Opened in Leadville in 1879, the Tabor Opera House became a major cultural center during the town’s mining boom. Built by Horace Tabor, later Leadville’s first mayor, it was considered Colorado’s most costly structure and hosted plays, notable performers, and even the 1880 funeral of Texas Jack Omohundro. Its fortunes declined after the 1893 collapse in silver prices, leading to changes in ownership, later reopening as the Elks Opera House, and a 1936 fire. Preserved for decades by Evelyn Furman and purchased by Leadville in 2016, it is now valued both as a historic theater and for its rare surviving nineteenth- and early twentieth-century stage scenery and machinery.