Reviving Leadville’s Jewish Legacy

Temple Israel, Leadville Historic District National Historic Landmark, Colorado

NPS/Astrid Liverman

Temple Israel is an important testament to Leadville, Colorado’s story of Jewish settlement. Originally known as Oro City, Leadville was once the largest of Colorado’s historic mining towns, experiencing successive booms in gold, silver, molybdenum, and other minerals beginning in 1860. While the town reached the height of its population in 1880, these ongoing strikes transformed the boom town into a smaller industrial community where mining has been nearly continuous to the present day.

From early days, Jewish merchants, many of them German immigrants, supplied the booming town with goods like clothing and groceries. By 1880, some 400 Jewish residents contributed to Leadville’s social and civic life through organizations including a religious school, the Hebrew Benevolent Society, and a B’nai B’rith Lodge. The Hebrew Cemetery was established to serve this community in January 1880. Temple Israel followed in 1884.

Interior view, Temple Israel, Leadville, Colorado

NPS/Astrid Liverman

The Many Lives of Temple Israel

Most of Leadville’s Jewish settlers belonged to the American Reform Judaism movement, and it was a Reform congregation that created Temple Israel. Silver baron Horace A. W. Tabor donated the land for the temple’s construction. David May, who later founded the May Company department stores, served as the chair of the building committee and was a prominent member of Leadville’s Jewish community.¹ The congregation split in 1892, with a second, Orthodox congregation, Kneseth Israel, converting a former church in Leadville into a synagogue (demolished, 1937).

Constructed at a cost of $4,000, or around $125,000 today, Temple Israel is an example of the Carpenter Gothic style, featuring pointed arch and rose windows, clapboard framing, steeples, and a steeply pitched roof. The building housed a sanctuary with a choir gallery and seating for 250 congregants. George E. King was named as the architect.

Regular services were held at Temple Israel until about 1908 as Jewish residents increasingly relocated to more promising urban areas such as Denver. The congregation dissolved in the 1910s. Between 1937 and 1966, the building lived many lives as a radiator repair shop, housing, and a vicarage for the St. George Episcopal Church across the street.

The Temple Israel Foundation purchased the building in 1992. Following serious damage from an electrical fire in 2006, the Foundation restored the building with the help of grants from the Colorado State Historical Fund. The Colorado Historical Foundation holds a historic preservation easement on the building to ensure its long-term preservation. The building now serves as the Temple Israel Museum.

Temple Israel is a contributing building to the Leadville Historic District National Historic Landmark, designated on July 4, 1961. Information for this article was drawn in large part from the Temple Israel Foundation.

[1] Brooke Keith, “Temple Israel: A Lake County Frontier Synagogue” (September 8, 2022), Colorado Historical Foundation.