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Brentano's, Published 1931. Hardcover, xiii, 299 pp. plus 24 unnumbered pages of plates; 23 cm; First Edition (dated 1931 on copyright page with no later printing noted); illustrated with black-and-white plates from photographs, engravings and period newspaper illustrations; pictorial map endpapers of the Pike's Peak country.
In Very Good condition, no dust jacket. Burnt orange cloth boards with black illustration of a miner on front, black lettering on spine. Mild shelf wear, some soiling to cloth on spine, a small white spot on spine, and some mild color loss along edges and at spine hinges. Binding tight. Rough-cut edges, top edge stained black. Pages mildly toned. Otherwise unmarked. Chronicle of the 1859 Pike's Peak gold rush and the Colorado mining camps through the Leadville silver boom of the late 1870s, built around Horace A. W. Tabor, his first wife Augusta, and his widow's last years at the Matchless mine. Willison (1896-1972), a Denver native and Rhodes Scholar, later wrote Saints and Strangers (1945); he drew on memoirs, manuscript collections, the files of the Leadville Herald-Democrat and conversations with surviving pioneers. Plates come from the Colorado Historical Society, David J. Cook's Hands Up, Frank Leslie's and Harper's Weekly. A revised and enlarged edition followed in 1946. Adams, Six-Guns and Saddle Leather 2415 (scarce): "contains much material on the lawlessness in the mining camps of Colorado." Contents: Foreword; The Shining Mountains; Argonauts, Inc.; Pike's Peak or Bust!; Gulch Gold and Blossom Rock; The Elephant Corral; Bummers and Stranglers; Toward Sand Creek; California Gulch and Buckskin Joe; The Carbonate Kings of Leadville; Magic City; Bel Esprits and Bunkosteerers; Reign of the Footpads and Vigilantes; Dies Faustus; Back to the Earth Again.