Built 1881
The house of Jesse F. McDonald
Leadville in 1879 was the richest silver camp in the world and one of the largest cities in Colorado. Jesse McDonald came from Ohio to make a career in mining and did it quickly — the Harvard, the Penrose and the El Dorado were his within five years.
He built this house to entertain. That intention is still legible in the plan: the front rooms have twelve-foot ceilings, crystal chandeliers and carved mantels, and they open into one another so a crowd can move through them. The wallpaper is reproduced from the English originals. The plank pine and hardwood floors are the ones laid in 1881.
The mansion was expanded in 1893 and now divides into three units that lock from one another — which is how a house built for nineteenth-century entertaining turns out to suit a modern group of fourteen rather well.
A short history
Three governors in one day
- 1879
Jesse F. McDonald arrives in Leadville from Ohio to work in mining.
- 1884
Within five years he owns the Harvard, the Penrose and the El Dorado mines.
- 1881
The house is built — to entertain the people passing through a boom town.
- 1893
The mansion is expanded to its present six bedrooms.
- 1899
McDonald is elected mayor of Leadville, and later state senator for Lake County.
- 1904
He is elected Lieutenant Governor of Colorado.
- 1905
On 16 March, Colorado has three governors in one day. Alva Adams takes office; his election is contested; James Peabody replaces him on condition of immediate resignation — handing the office to McDonald.
- 1907
McDonald leaves office having served as Governor for two years.
- Today
Three private units, six bedrooms, and the original floors, mantels and ceilings.
Inside
The rooms as they are now
Come and stay in it
Four ways to book, from two people to fourteen.