At a glance
- What it is
- A former town on Henson Creek, about 9 miles west of Lake City, at about 9,480 feet.
- The story
- George Lee built a brick mansion here with a ballroom and a small theater. He died in 1905 with an estate valued at $98.90.
- Getting there
- On the Engineer Pass road. A two-wheel-drive car can usually reach it June to November. Private parcels surround the site.
In 1877, a former mine superintendent named George S. Lee came to the forks of Henson Creek with plans bigger than the valley: smelters, a sawmill, kilns, a brick mansion and, if the local stories are right, the capital of Colorado. Keep a running tab as you read. His story ends on one number, and it's a good one.
George Lee renames Galena City
Lee wasn't the first dreamer here. In 1875 George B. Greene of Denver planned a townsite called Silver Glen and started a smelter. Bad ore and money troubles beat him, and he never finished it.
Lee was a different kind of guy. Legends of America says he came from Illinois, went to college in the East, and was a mine superintendent at Central City in the 1860s. In 1877 he took over the camp, by then called Galena City, and opened an office in Lake City for the new Galena Mining District. On May 18, 1877, the post office opened under a new name: Capitol City.
Why that name? Here the sources split. Wikipedia and the Lake City tourism site say Lee dreamed the town would become Colorado's capital and he would be its governor. Legends of America calls that "local lore" and says Lee named it for nearby Capitol Mountain, which he thought looked like a capitol dome. Pick your favorite. I know which one is more fun.
A Governor's Mansion with its own theater
Lee builds like a team owner who signs every big free agent in one offseason. In 1878 a 200-acre townsite is laid out and lots go on sale. The Lee Smelter goes up at the lower edge of town, and the Henson Creek Reduction Works rises at the upper end, swallowing Greene's unfinished smelter. In 1879 Capitol City incorporates, the only Hinsdale County town besides Lake City to do it.
Then the house. Lee finishes a two-story brick mansion he calls "The Governor's Mansion." He has the bricks hauled from Pueblo at $1 apiece. Everybody else in the San Juans brought a bag of chips to the potluck, and Lee showed up with a three-tier cake. The house has a ballroom, a small theater with an orchestra pit, and the only gabled brick outhouse in the region. I tried to write a joke about the gabled brick outhouse, but the outhouse is already the joke.
People came to see it. Governor F. W. Pitkin was a guest in 1879. A writer named Frank Fossett described the house a year later, and the part of his sentence that survives goes like this:
And right here among these rugged mountains of faraway San Juan, where one would least expect to find it...Frank Fossett, 1880, as quoted by Legends of America
The numbers kept climbing. In 1880 Lee's kiln made 240,000 bricks, and his operations employed more than 115 men. By 1881 a telephone line ran from his house to neighboring communities. In 1881. The town's peak population is either 800 or 400, depending on which source you trust, so call it a few hundred people at least.
The silver didn't hold up its end
Here's the problem with all of it. Everything Lee built rode on silver ore, and the ore turned out to be poor.
In March 1882 the Lee Smelter is sold at a sheriff's sale. In August the Lees sell everything they own in Hinsdale County and move to Denver. By 1885 the town is down to about 100 people, lawsuits have the mines tied up, and the guidebook writer George Crofutt sums up the scene in six words:
the owners are sitting and fightingGeorge A. Crofutt, Grip-Sack Guide of Colorado, 1885, as quoted by Legends of America
That's a whole season in one line. The team that signed every star spent the year arguing in the locker room.
Both smelters are soon scrapped. The silver collapse of 1893 cuts output again. Gold finds around 1900 bring a short revival. The post office closes on October 30, 1920, and by 1930 Capitol City is a ghost town.
And George Lee? He kept going. He hunted placer gold (gold washed out of creek gravel), developed silver mines, and earned several patents as an inventor. He died in 1905. The man who built a Governor's Mansion with its own theater, paid a dollar a brick, and ran a phone line into the mountains left an estate worth $98.90. Ninety-eight dollars. Ninety cents.
Visiting Capitol City today
Capitol City sits on the Engineer Pass road, part of the Alpine Loop, about 9 miles west of Lake City along Henson Creek, at about 9,480 feet. Between June and November you can usually get there in a regular two-wheel-drive car. The BLM lists it as a short trip, about two hours, from Lake City.
The mansion is gone. What's left is the old post office, the Lee Smelter stack, some rubble buildings and a few kilns. Legends of America says Rose's Lime Kiln, named for Lee's daughter Rose, is the only Lee investment in the county that survives. It made ash-free lime for cement.
There are private homes and private lots all around the site, so stay on the road and off anyone's land. Look for the wooden sign that says "Capitol City, Founded in 1877" next to a log cabin. Lee left in 1882. His name for the place never did.