More than 125 years ago, decades before Colorado became the popular tourist destination it is today, the people of Leadville dreamt up a grand vision to attract visitors from around the world: building a palace out of ice.

In her new book, “The 1896 Leadville Ice Palace,” Colorado author and historian Afton Rorvik describes how Leadville city leaders decided to build an elaborate ice palace, constructed it in a matter of weeks and invited the world to see it.

“It’s really quite a story — and it’s a true story,” Rorvik said. “It’s almost hard to imagine that it really did happen.”

Born in Fort Collins, Rorvik fell in love with Leadville after first visiting the historic mining town with her mother nearly 50 years ago. She said the mining town’s old buildings, like the Tabor Opera House, and its rich history, “drew me in.”

As a teenager, Rorvik said she would use her allowance money to purchase pamphlets about Leadville’s history and, for years, her mother would send her books about the town’s mining days for her birthday.

Rorvik said she settled on the ice palace as the subject of her book because “it is a wonderful tribute to human ingenuity and the spirit of Leadville.” The book relies on primary source documents, including original newspaper articles published in the Leadville newspaper, the Herald Democrat, between 1895 and 1896.

“It might seem a little odd to our modern minds ,but they were building ice palaces in several cities in the U.S. and around Europe,” Rorvik said. “So, in 1895, Leadville decided ‘We’re going to build an ice palace and it’s not going to be any little thing. It’s going to be the biggest and the best the world has ever seen.'”

Up until the Silver Panic of 1893, Leadville had been a “very prosperous” mining town, riding high on the silver boom of the late 1870s. But as the price of silver dropped and mines closed due to the Silver Panic, Leadville town leaders mounted what Rorvik described as what was essentially a “marketing campaign” for the town.

With miners out of jobs and Leadville struggling, the city leaders pitched the ice palace as the way to save the town, Rorvik said. Even without modern technology like forklifts or cranes, the ice palace was completed on an ambitious timeline, with the first block of ice being laid Nov. 25, 1895, and the palace opening to the public on Jan. 1, 1896, she said.

“That’s kind of how Leadville was — they dreamed big,” Rorvik said. “People came here with big dreams, hoping to strike it rich. So they were going to go big — and they did go big.”

A “very well regarded miner,” Tingley S. Wood led the charge to construct the ice palace, helping to raise funds for the venture and spending a lot of his own money on it, Rorvik said. Hundreds of townspeople helped build the palace. An architect skilled with ice was hired. Trees on a hillside outside of town were cut down and dynamite was used to remove the stumps. Carpenters built a frame out of wood. Large blocks of ice were cut from local ponds and lakes and hauled to the site by horse-drawn sleds. Ropes and pulleys were used to raise the ice blocks high enough to build 90-foot towers, and boiling water was used to melt the cubes of ice so they would refreeze together, she said.

When the ice palace opened, it was 450-feet long and 320-feet wide with a skating rink at its center and coal-burning stoves for people to warm themselves by, Rorvik said. Although electricity had only come to Leadville in 1881, the palace featured hollow columns of ice with light bulbs suspended in them, she said.

Newspaper reporters were invited to help spread the word about “Crystal Carnival” and people came from all over to visit the ice palace, riding overnight on the narrow-gauge railroad through the mountains to get to Leadville, Rorvik said. Through the winter, townspeople and visitors were instructed to wear costumes to celebrate the affair, especially on Press Day, which was held Jan. 15, 1896, to promote the ice palace, she said.

“The mayor of Leadville issued this extremely complicated proclamation with a lot of fancy words that basically said, ‘You must wear a costume. If you are on the streets of Leadville after 10 a.m. and you’re not wearing a costume on press day you will be thrown in jail,'” Rorvik said.

By the end of March, the coming spring had melted the ice palace and it closed, Rorvik said. Some had suggested keeping the scaffolding up to reconstruct it annually, but long-standing financial issues with the ice palace simmered back to the surface, she said. In the more than 100 years since, Leadville has not attempted to recreate the ice palace.

“It was truly remarkable. People have talked about ‘Maybe we should do another ice palace,'” Rorvik said. “But it was expensive. People didn’t keep great records so nobody really knows but some people have said it might have cost almost $5 million in today’s money when it was all said and done.”

Still, when compared at least to ice palaces built in Canada and St. Paul, Minnesota, built around the same time, the Leadville ice palace was larger and more elaborate, Rorvik said. While it may not have been a financial success, the memory of the ice palace has not faded, more than a century later.

“The 1896 Leadville Ice Palace” is available at Next Page Books in Frisco, the Leadville Heritage Museum, Two Dog Market in Leadville or through the book’s publisher, Filter Press. The book is part of the Filter Press series “Now You Know,” which is focused on Colorado history.