Leadville sits at 10,152 feet, the highest incorporated city in North America, and it wears its wild past proudly. This is the Cloud City of silver kings, Doc Holliday, the Unsinkable Molly Brown and a palace built of ice, all along a Victorian main street ringed by Colorado’s tallest peaks.

Prospectors found gold in California Gulch around 1860, but Leadville’s real fortune came in 1874, when an assay revealed silver-rich lead carbonate ore. The silver boom made Leadville one of the richest mining towns in the world. Horace Tabor and Baby Doe Tabor rose to become the “Silver King and Queen,” Margaret “Molly” Brown lived here before her Titanic fame, and Doc Holliday drank in its saloons. Labor strikes turned violent, and the 1893 silver crash nearly finished the town. In 1896, Leadville built an enormous Ice Palace to lure visitors. It drew about 250,000 people but lost money. Leadville kept reinventing itself with the Climax molybdenum mine and 10th Mountain Division training at nearby Camp Hale.

Walk Harrison Avenue to see the brick storefronts of the boom years, including the Tabor Opera House, then dig into the story at the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum and the Heritage Museum, which has a model of the Ice Palace. Leadville averages about 310 sunny days a year and is the base camp for climbing Mount Elbert, Colorado’s highest peak. Molly Brown fans can follow her story to Denver at the Molly Brown House Museum. The altitude is real, so drink plenty of water and take it slow your first day.

Every August, Leadville’s Boom Days, held since 1949, fills Harrison Avenue with burro races, mining competitions and a parade. In winter, nearby Ski Cooper and Nordic trails take over. Find upcoming events at leadvilletwinlakes.com.