In the late 1800s, Colorado’s mining magnates decided to build a palace as a tribute to earth’s minerals that had enriched them.
It was the Gilded Age, and they built an opulent white building with huge columns that, in scope, rivaled the stately federal buildings in Washington, D.C., or the grand libraries Andrew Carnegie built in that era.
They put it in Pueblo, Colorado, called it the Mineral Palace and installed exhibits to show off earthen elements, filling the cavernous building with all sorts of mineral specimens like a museum.
“The Colorado Mineral Palace at Pueblo, when completed, will be a dazzling object lesson to all the world of the ore-wealth of the Rocky Mountain region,” the National Magazine reported in 1889.
The ambitions were grand.
“Is there any doubt the Mineral Palace will be the eighth wonder of the world?” said a story in the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper in 1889.
But the palace and its treasures didn’t last, much like mining in states like Colorado decades ago and Wyoming now. Lasting just 52 years, the Mineral Palace is a reminder of how short a time span wealth and prosperity lasts and how the adage “from dust to dust” envelopes everything, especially objects from the earth.
In the Mineral Palace’s great hall, the mining magnates erected a king and a queen to rule over the palace, which was also meant to be a regional center for events and large parties as was common then.
They were two larger-than-life, opulent statues, sculpted to evoke Greek gods, Colorado State University-Pueblo history professor Jonathan Rees told Colorado Public Radio.
All Hail The King And Queen
There was King Coal, a 16-foot-tall figure made of coal, diamonds and diamond dust funded by coal-mining companies in Trinidad, Colorado.
He was dark in complexion and sat on a throne dressed like an English king. He wore a robe, pantaloons and black shoes with large buckles. A crown was perched above his wig, which hung down to his shoulders. His right hand held a long scepter, and the words “King Coal of Trinidad” were carved under his throne.
Beside him was Queen Silver, 18 feet tall and sitting in a boat-like chariot adorned with a bird perched above the canopy and two cherubs at her side. “Silver Queen,” was carved under the edifice, along with the words, “Aspen, Colorado.” The city and its mountain mines had paid for her construction.
On July 4, 1891, the palace opened with great fanfare. The Cowboy Band of Silverton, Colorado, played music, historian Karen Mitchell wrote on a website dedicated to Pueblo history.
But as the years went on, the building fell into disrepair and was demolished.
King Coal and the Silver Queen vanished without a trace.
Coal’s Glory Days
For decades more than 100 years ago, coal was America’s main energy source and a major source of wealth and prosperity. Much of it came from the Western region.
More than 1,700 coal mines have operated in Colorado at one time or another over the last 160 years, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Coal deposits were first reported in Wyoming in 1843, and it sparked many of the state’s early communities like Cumberland, a coal company-owned town south of Kemmerer.
Coal became central to Wyoming’s growth and identity. The state is home to nine of the nation’s 10 largest coal mines. The Cowboy State produced more than 400 million tons per year in its heyday and provided 50% of America’s energy.
But coal’s no longer the dominant energy source for the nation like it was for decades, and the industry has been in decline for more than a decade. Wyoming’s Powder River Basin now is on pace to produce less than 200 million tons of coal, while natural gas has taken over as the nation’s top source of power while green energy from solar and wind turbines make inroads.
Mining has slowed in Wyoming, and many companies are shrinking their operations, announcing closures to mines like Arch Resources-owned Coal Creek and Black Thunder.
In Colorado, six of eight coal-fired power plants are scheduled to close or convert to natural gas between this year and 2030, according to the Colorado Labor Department.
Silver, like coal, fueled a boom in the West, especially in Colorado mountain towns, where it was first discovered in Central City and Idaho Springs in 1859. Colorado’s largest silver district became Leadville in the 1870s, and Aspen became the state’s next boom area just before 1880.
But the run on silver didn’t last long, and the industry was soon in decline when Congress passed an act that required the government to buy up huge amounts of silver, deflating its prices, followed by an economic recession in 1893.
The silver market crashed and never returned to its glorious heights.
The Mineral Palace, built in 1891, in Pueblo, Colorado. (Courtesy Pueblo County Historical Society) 
King Coal in the Colorado Mineral Palace in Pueblo, Colorado. The statue was made of coal, diamonds and diamond dust. (Courtesy Denver Public Library) 
Inside the Mineral Palace. (Courtesy Pueblo City-County Library District) 
The Mineral Palace in disrepair in 1942 before its demolition. On the right side is the Silver Queen statue. (Courtesy Aspen Historical Society)
Vanishing Statues
The Mineral Palace sat on 27 acres north of the Pueblo business district near the Denver and Rio Grande train depot, and included a man-made lake, flower gardens, public bathhouse and a small zoo on the grounds for the region to come and picnic on.
Otto Bulow, a Swedish architect, designed the palace with 21 domes, the highest being more than 70 feet above the floor of the main hall. The building was made with stone quarried from Colorado, including sandstone that made the columns and gold leaf that lined the domes.
Gold ore, jewels, basalt, granite, sandstone — anything mined from the region — was on display for visitors to see.
The Silver Queen was even shown off on the road at the World’s Fair in Chicago a few years after the Mineral Palace had opened, according to History Colorado, a nonprofit and state agency that keeps the state’s history.
But the timing of the Mineral Palace couldn’t have been worse.
The project had struggled to completion and the company that had formed to build it went bankrupt not long after as the mining industry and much of the nation was sucked into the economic depression that came just two years after the palace opened, known as the Great Panic of 1893.
The city of Pueblo took ownership of the property, but did not have any money to maintain it.
“Even in the palace’s heyday the city struggled to maintain it,” Devin Flores, a Pueblo historian considered the foremost researcher of the Mineral Palace’s history, wrote for History Colorado. “Repairs were both frequent and expensive, and the building had no heating at all — a cost-saving measure that made it almost unusable for half the year due to cold or windy weather.
“And then, barely three decades after the Palace's grand opening, the Great Depression came.”
The longer time went on, the further the Gilded Age became part of the past. The Mineral Palace continued to deteriorate from neglect until Pueblo officials decided to demolish the building in 1943 and sell off everything in it — including King Coal and the Silver Queen — to help fund the war effort, Flores said.
Destroyed Or Missing?
Where the statutes ended up remains a bit of a mystery.
Over the years, people have surmised the Silver Queen was left at the World’s Fair in Chicago or that King Coal was moved to another location.
Ken Kucera, a mineral collections volunteer with the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum, wrote in a research paper that both statues were vandalized and damaged during the Great Depression.
According to Flores, the possible last known photograph of the Mineral Palace from 1942 shows the queen still intact and in her chariot. But the palace around her is wrecked and the statue appears damaged with holes.
Flores also has said that King Coal had been shattered by machine gun fire from vandals while the Silver Queen was missing her scepter and an arm. Reportedly the palace’s curator ordered both statutes destroyed in the 1940s.
But, researchers say, the evidence was not conclusive and the mystery lingers, especially in the case of the Silver Queen.
“Until official records are found showing that the Silver Queen was ordered to be disposed of, the search will no doubt continue,” Flores said.
Justin George can be reached at justin@cowboystatedaily.com.
