Dr. James Walsh: The Irish In Leadville Mines. 11.6.26.

Description: Leadville, Colorado, at 10,200 Feet in Elevation, is the highest town in North America. It is also the site of the largest and most politically important Irish immigrant communities in the Rocky Mountain West, which consisted of approximately 20% of the population during the early 1880s. This working class immigrant community occupied the most difficult jobs, struggled unsuccessfully to improve their working conditions, many died very young from harsh winters, sickness, mining accidents, and epidemics. Michael Davitt travelled on a number of occasions to Leadville to show his support for the Leadville Irish and branches of the Land League were established in the area. The Catholic Free section of Leadville's Evergreen Cemetery holds the remains of thousands of Irish immigrants, buried in sunken, unmarked graves. The average age of death was twenty-three and nearly half of them are children. Today, a major memorial to these 19th century Irish immigrants is under construction, naming those in the unmarked graves and standing as a visual reminder of the human toll that industrial labour took on Irish immigrant communities across North America.