"Telling Details at Ten-Thousand Feet and a Century Past, article by Ann Parker, Web Mystery Magazine, Fall 2005

"Telling Details" at Ten-Thousand Feet and a Century Past

I blame it on my Uncle Walt.

He was the one who mentioned Leadville, Colorado, while relating a bit of family history. As a born-and-bred Californian (with strong family ties to Colorado), I was nonplussed. To my puzzled query "What the heck is Leadville?" he responded "Just one of the biggest silver rushes ever!"

In 1879, thirty years after the Gold Rush in California, people came from all over the world to this town nestled at the head of the Arkansas Valley, ten thousand feet in the Rocky Mountains. All to get rich.

Uncle Walt finished by saying (and I remember this well), "I know you've been wanting to write a novel. I think you could write one set in Leadville."

I was intrigued and assured Uncle Walt I'd do a little investigating. Back in the hotel, I pulled out our handy dandy guidebook (it was a family vacation, after all). There, on page 247, of the Colorado Handbook by Stephen Metzger, was the sentence that started me down the road to writing a series set in nineteenth century Leadville, Colorado:

"During the 1880s, Leadville was a rambunctious town with three breweries, brass bands playing every night along State St., drunken women driving carriages and 'smoking long black cigars,' fights, vigilantes, rowdy gambling halls where the mine owners played for huge stakes, and a general sense of silver-induced frenzy."

Even in this one sentence, it was the details that captivated me.

Brass bands playing at night in the red light district?

Women smoking cigars?

Silver-induced frenzy?

This place and era, I thought, has real possibilities for fiction.

But there were a couple problems: First, I'm a science writer by trade. My background is physics and English Lit. What did I know about history in general, much less about Colorado in the 1880s? Nada. Second, I live and work in California. I couldn't exactly take a day trip to do research.

So, I started from scratch and at a distance. With many, many questions. Many doubts. Wondering how I would find the information, the details, that would bring the time and place alive.

As I discovered, sometimes the details can be found in books or the internet. Sometimes the place itself will yield up clues. And sometimes you can get the information straight from the experts.

I began by going to my local library and reading all I could find on Leadville and its history. As the premise of my first book, Silver Lies, took shape, I settled on Inez Stannert as my protagonist — a woman who owned a saloon, a woman with the kind of past that allows her to navigate the various levels of a still-evolving society in the tumultuous silver boom town. My choice of protagonist added more subjects to the list of things I didn't know but wanted to learn about, such as women's lives in mining towns and the West, and what it meant to run a saloon in that time and place. I found books that described women's experiences of the West in their own words, books such as Malinda Jenkin's Gambler's Wife: The Life of Malinda Jenkins and Mary Hallock Foote's A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West. I searched out the "telling details," little gems that would help bring the time and place alive. For instance, Ms. Foote, who actually lived in Leadville along with her mining engineer husband, wrote of a late spring in Leadville (probably in June), when the winds drove snow in under the door, where it lay unmelted all night "even with a fire kept up." The most valuable title I have in my collection is a 2000-plus page, two-volume set titled History of Leadville & Lake County, Colorado. It quotes extensively from the newspapers of the time and has over 300 pages devoted to 1880. Another book I turn to frequently for details is Saloons of the Old West by Richard Erdoes. Curious about "The Stuff They Drank" or "Death in the Barroom, or Likker and Lead"? The titles of these two chapters are just a sample of what the book includes.

But even as I read everything I could lay my hands on and started writing Silver Lies, my critique group asked when did I plan to visit Leadville?

"You mean go there? I have a job, a family, there's just no way . . . "

But I finally came to see the wisdom of their words and finagled time for a three-day visit to Leadville.

It's a good thing I did.

Because — despite all the photos in books and all my surfing on the internet — I had somehow managed to picture the town and its location all wrong. For whatever reason, I'd pictured it nestled in a steep canyon, rather like Georgetown, Colorado. The reality is quite different. Leadville situated in a broad valley, way up high where the breathing is thin and the sky stretches from one mountain range to the next.

Here, I knew, I could flesh out the world I was writing about — even though that world was more than a century gone, I could find details for my fiction.

So I walked.

I walked through the graveyard, looking at the names on gravestones. I took a tour through the opera house, built in 1879, its chairs still covered with the original upholstery. I walked the streets — some of which were still boardwalks, just as in the 1880s — at different times of day. As I strolled, I focused on those details that stay true over time. What is the light like? The sky at night? How cold is the air when you breathe and how does it feel on your face? What about the sound of footsteps on the boardwalks? I took copious notes and photographs. Those timeless sights and sensations would, I hoped, help bring the past alive when I sat down to write about it at home.

Since my protagonist is a saloon owner, I was (ahem) obliged to check out some of the various watering holes while I was in town. For this venture, I employed the assistance of my Colorado cousin — a six-foot-two mountain man of a fellow, no stranger to the arts of drinking and fisticuffs — who was more than happy to accompany me on my research for the price of a beer or two.

I chose a Leadville bar that claims a lineage back to 1879, the year Silver Lies begins. So, that's how we ended up, my cousin and I, beers in hand, sitting at a booth with me gawking at the décor and him gawking at the tourists. My cousin, who'd frequented Leadville's watering holes in his salad days, grumbled about how it sure wasn't the same as way back when, while I examined the wainscoting and stamped-tin ceiling and ogled the backbar.

While in Leadville, I also stayed at a bed and breakfast inn (http://www.theappleblossominn.com/) built in 1879. From the innkeeper, I learned the history of the house as well as what was original and what had been added on over time (always an issue for old homes). My protagonist's little home on Fourth Street took shape from those talks.

I discovered the Lake County Library and virtually disappeared into their back room. The microfiche newspaper records had more to offer than just news, I discovered. The advertisements were a gold (or should I say silver?) mine in themselves . . . Here's Turner & Stilwell, Wholesale Produce Commission Merchants, trumpeting "canned goods and groceries, green fruits and vegetables (a specialty). Pure Kentucky whiskies and cigars." And here's Haswell's Drug Store, which, on July 21, 1880, advertised not only drugs but assayer supplies, paints, and oils, noting that it was "open all night until further notice."

At the library I also discovered bird's eye view maps — in which artists created panorama cityscapes from high overhead — and fire insurance maps — in which surveyors drafted detailed maps showing construction materials of various buildings as well as their dimensions and the activities enclosed within their walls. I spent hours pouring over the photograph collection, examining images of not just at the buildings and roads, but of people as well — their faces, their hairstyles, and what they wore, from their hats to their shoes. (Excellent photo collections also exist at the Colorado Historical Society and the Denver Public Library, which has an online collection at http://www.photoswest.org/)

I also learned that one of the best ways to find experts for nearly any topic was to overcome my initial shyness and ask questions. One never knows what else will turn up in the process. For instance, when I had questions about mines and mining-related topics — how mining claims were recorded, and how "consolidated" mines were formed and so on — I called the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum (http://www.mininghalloffame.org/) in Leadville. After some discussion, the museum's director put me in touch with a gentleman who met me one morning during my Leadville visit over the largest cinnamon rolls I've ever ventured to eat. After a chat about Leadville's mining history, he offered that his grandfather had come to Leadville in the time frame I was writing about. He and his wife were transcribing his grandfather's letters into their computer. "You can copy whatever you'd like," he said. "It's mostly boring stuff, about what he had for breakfast, how much he paid for a new shirt, that kind of thing." In other words, the kinds of details an historical mystery writer would sell her first-born (well, ok, maybe just rent him out) to know.

By following a simple philosophy — ask questions, ask them often, ask of every and any one — I've uncovered experts for nearly every topic I've been stumped on. Experts that were happy to talk to me about silver assay techniques in 1879, about how it feels to ride sidesaddle (like "sitting on a balance beam"), about Civil-War era guns, and about what a burning stable smells like ("in addition to the wood, there'd be the smell of burning leather, oats, corn, etc. . . . And yes, you can smell burning hair and sometimes flesh").

Back home, far from Colorado, the maps are tacked on the walls outside my office. The photos are in photo albums or taped to the walls. I fill three-ring binders, divided (and sometimes sub-divided) into subject areas of interest such as "counterfeiting," "Leadville's hospitals," "red-light districts," "lot-jumping," and so on. Much as I wish I had a reasonable electronic filing system, it seems I'm just a paper junkie, so when I find a site of interest, I print out at least the home page, punch it, and file it in a binder.

Now, when my protagonist ventures across town, I can jump up from my desk and eyeball the 1879 bird's eye map of Leadville to plot her route, refer to the fire insurance maps to get an idea of the businesses she passes on her journey, and look at the photographs I took last July to remember how bright the sun was and how cold the nights were (and yes, they were cold in July…).

It's not as good as being there, but it's close.

First sentence: "Sweet Jesus, Inez Stanner muttered, surveying the ruins of her drinking establishment."

Visit Amazon.com to read more of Silver Lies.

Silver Lies (ISBN 1590580729) is available at Amazon.com or other online outlets as well as most bookstores.