The Little Kingdom. A Record Chiefly Of Central City In The Early Days

LYNN PERRIGO

Publication: Published with the approval of the Central City Opera House Association, 1934, Boulder, Colorado

First edition. 8vo. Light blue printed wrappers, 24 pp., foreword. The author's first book publication and it's a compact history of Central City, Colorado, and the surrounding Gilpin County mining country during the early gold-rush period.

Central City was founded in the aftermath of John H. Gregory's 1859 gold discovery, and the surrounding area rapidly became one of Colorado's great mining centers. Gilpin County was extraordinarily wealthy and populous for its size ... the reason the region acquired the evocative nickname "The Little Kingdom of Gilpin."

Perrigo reconstructs that world: the mining camps, miners, businesses, social life, and development of Central City during its early years. The emphasis is on the people and everyday character of the community, rather than simply a chronology of gold production.

One particularly interesting aspect is the cultural life of the mining town. Central City was an unusually sophisticated place for a remote nineteenth-century mining camp. English and Cornish miners were prominent, and their musical traditions contributed to the town's cultural life. Contemporary descriptions note that the community supported a substantial theater/opera tradition despite its rough mining-camp setting.

And that's significant because the Central City Opera House is part of the story's larger historical setting. Perrigo's 1934 booklet was actually published by the Central City Opera House Association, which gives you a clue about its purpose: it was helping preserve and tell the history of this remarkable old mining community.

Cover spine and top edges lightly toned, separation to the top three inches of spine and all top corners are creased else a very good tight copy of an uncommon and important early history of one of Colorado's most significant Gold Rush communities.