Caroline Bancroft is a third generation Coloradan who began writing her first history for The Denver Post in 1928.

Her long-standing interest in western history was inherited. Her pioneer grandfather, Dr. F. J. Bancroft, was a founder of the Colorado Historical Society and its first president.

His granddaughter has carried on the family tradition. She is the author of the interesting series of Bancroft Booklets, Silver Queen: The Fabulous Story of Baby Doe Tabor, Famous Aspen, Denver’s Lively Past, Historic Central City, The Brown Palace in Denver, Tabor’s Matchless Mine and Lusty Leadville, Augusta Tabor: Her Side of the Scandal, Glenwood’s Early Glamor, Colorado’s Lost Gold Mines and Buried Treasure, The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown and Colorful Colorado.

A Bachelor of Arts from Smith College, she later obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of Denver, writing her thesis on Central City, Colorado. Her full-size Gulch of Gold is the definitive history of that well-known area, which includes Nevadaville, the scene of the accompanying photo. She is shown with Daniel K. Peterson who drew the maps and took most of the contemporary pictures for the new booklet on ghost towns.

STEPHEN L. R. McNICHOLS Governor of Colorado 1956-1962

The Cover

The Dumont boarding house in North Empire, unique for its ground-level dormer windows, was built about 1872 for miners working on the Benton lode, owned by John M. Dumont. In 1897, with a date still on the wall, it was bought by a Mrs. Bishop who painted the building a purplish blue. She operated it as a boarding house until about 1906 when she took over the Peck House (Hotel Splendide) in Empire. Still later, in the 1930’s, Waldemar Nelson lived in the “Blue House” and used one section as a machine shop. A forge was still there in 1960. Photo by Dan Peterson.