The Inner Life of Baby Doe Tabor

The legend of Elizabeth McCourt Doe Tabor--popularly "Baby Doe"--has been retold countless times in media retrospectives, at the site of her cabin at the Matchless Mine in Leadville, Colorado, and in opera, film, and cartoon. In this account, a new perspective is offered, based on her own core values of family and faith. She was a devout Catholic in the latter half of her life, and she also had her personal eccentricities. The reader is invited to reflect on how her inner life relates--or not--to her legend. Is it fair to claim that she was "going mad?" Was she always the dreamy romantic of her youth? What does her life tell us about the Gilded Age when she was the "Silver Queen of the West?" As a single mother, her story explores the difficulties of raising children alone. Above all, just as she never liked her "Baby Doe" nickname, and preferred the respectful "Mrs. Tabor", she would have rejected a legend that portrayed her as a victim of fate.