Cripple Creek Days by Mabel Barbee Lee | 1958 FIRST EDITION | Colorado Gold Rush History | Bixley Shop
Cripple Creek Days we written by Mabel Barbee Lee in 1958. This is a first edition copy. According to the dust jacket... "Today (1958), Cripple Creek, Colorado is a ghost town. Seventy-five years ago it was the scene of one of the greatest gold strikes in the West - a bumptious boom town of tar-paper shacks, bonanza claims, saloons, brothels, and millionaire's mansions."
Note: We looked up Cripple Creek today and it's anything but a ghost town!
GOOD READS REVIEW
Mabel Barbee Lee has written a rousing tale of early days in Cripple Creek, Colorado. She speaks with authority because she arrived there as a child in 1892, and with wide-eyed wonder saw the whole place turn to gold.With his divining rod, Mabel's father tapped gold ore on Beacon Hill but missed becoming a millionaire by selling his claim short. Nonetheless, life was rich for young Mabel in a booming town with points of interest like Poverty Gulch, the Continental Hotel, and a fantastic house called Finn's Folly; with characters around like the promoter Windy Joe and (seen from a distance) the madam Pearl De Vere; with something always going on, whether a celebration or a disastrous fire or train wreck or a no-nonsense miners' strike. Mabel Lee's book brings back a time and place with affection. The foreword is by Lowell Thomas, who was her pupil when she was a young schoolmarm in Cripple Creek.
BIXLEY NOTES
• Cripple Creek Days
• Written by Mabel Barbee Lee
• Forward by Lowell Thomas
• 270 page hardcover with dust jacket
• Published by Doubleday & Company, 1958
• Black & white photography section
• Measures 8 1/2" x 5 3/4"
VINTAGE NOTES
• In very good condition
• Some creasing and small tears along the edges of the dust jacket
• Inscribed in pencil on the front inside page
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