9 JULY 20-26, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | have led to a suspicious fi re that destroyed his New York museum in 1865. The cause of the fi re was never proven, but Confederate sympathizers had targeted the structure before and may have been the culprits. After the loss of the museum, Barnum’s good friend Horace Greeley advised him that it was time to go fi shing. But Barnum wasn’t ready to retire. He would rise from the ashes again and again, working on the Greatest Show on Earth and related projects, until his death in 1891. His name would live on, along with many stories about his exploits that simply weren’t true. “When he died, he didn’t have anyone to polish his brand,” Maher notes. “His actual story kind of got lost.” The most reliable record of Barnum’s Colo- rado adventures can be found in, of all places, the archives of the Denver Public Library. A special collection devoted to Barnum includes more than a hundred letters he exchanged with his lawyers and business associates deal- ing with his vexatious invest- ments in the Centennial State and related catastrophes. Barnum fi rst came to Colo- rado in the early 1870s to de- liver temperance speeches and inspect the Union Colony, a utopian farming community that would soon evolve into the town of Greeley. Over the next few years he acquired a ranch south of Pueblo, several lots in Greeley’s busi- ness district and 765 acres on the western outskirts of Denver, which he fi gured would soon be needed for expansion of the rapidly growing city. He had high hopes. “I have made more money in the rise of real estate than in all other ways put to- gether,” he boasted to his Greeley attorneys. “My investments in Colorado are made with the idea of immense returns after a while.” But even pint-sized returns were hard to come by. The letters are full of fretting over deadbeat tenants, untrustworthy partners and prospective buyers who are all hat, no cattle. He set up a tubercular, alcohol- imbibing son-in-law, William Buchtel, in business only to endure complaints from his daughter Helen about her desire to leave Colorado. (Buchtel’s brother Henry later became the chancellor of the University of Denver, Colorado’s governor, and the namesake of Buchtel Boulevard.) Barnum had snatched up his property west of Denver sight unseen for a few thou- sand dollars, with the expectation that it could be worth as much as $200,000 to an ambitious developer. But the area was hilly, muddy and forbidding; after a few months, Barnum was willing to unload his investment for half that price. He still had no takers. He fl irted with the idea of selling it to Denver as parkland, but he didn’t have the juice with local offi cials to make that happen. Initially charmed by the city’s fi ne air and scenery, he became increasingly pessimistic about getting a fair shake from the locals. “I know Colorado (& especially Denver) swarms with unscrupulous sharpers even in the courts & holding offi cial positions,” he wrote in 1878. Barnum prided himself on being the prince of humbug, the baron of ballyhoo. His come-ons, like the Fejee mermaid, may have been the nineteenth-century equivalent of clickbait, but he insisted that people wanted to be fooled — and that nobody ever left his attractions without feeling entertained. But he was out-humbugged by the sharpers in Denver. After several years of frustration, he decided to throw in the towel. He parceled out what lots he could and turned the rest over to his daughter for one dollar. The town of Barnum was incorporated in 1887, but within a few years, most of it had been annexed by Denver. The former township was offi cially designated the Bar- num neighborhood (though portions of what had once been Barnum’s holdings became part of the West Barnum and Villa Park neighborhoods). Originally envisioned as an enclave for the wealthy, Barnum evolved as a multicultural, working-class area that was (and still is) one of the most affordable neighborhoods in the city. Doubtless there are many local trailblazers worth celebrating who have stronger roots in that community than Barnum himself, an absentee land speculator. (Asked if she had any nominations for the library name, Torres suggested Lucile Buchanan, a former Barnum resident and the fi rst Black woman to gradu- ate from the University of Colorado.) Even so, Barnum has a persistent claim on the locals, too. Quite apart from the historical signifi cance of his many contributions to American culture — as the progenitor of mass entertainment, the pseudo-event, viral messaging, yada yada — there’s the matter of his bitter education in the boondoggles of Colorado real estate. Like somebody once said, there’s one born every minute. Email the author at [email protected]. The Ross-Barnum Library includes mosaics devoted to P.T. Barnum’s colorful career. JAY VOLLMAR JAY VOLLMAR
