Talk:Leadville, Colorado

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[edit] Elevation Controversy

Leadville is -- or at least was -- the highest incorporated city in the US. Incorporation being an important part of the distinction. This has been occasionally challenged by the town of Alma. The mess is so bad now that some people consider the elevation of Leadville to be 10,430 ft, which parts of it are. Interestingly, neither the benchmark at city hall nor the one at the county court house is at either 10,152 or 10,430, so which point in particular they are measuring is somewhat of a mystery. The 10,430 mark is presumably somewhere on Leadville's eastern side.

I seem to recall the city fathers claiming, during one of the more contentious arguments, that they might just "annex Mount Elbert and finish this fight once and for all!".

• Alma - 10,355 ft
• Montezuma - 10,335 ft
• Leadville - 10,152 ft

http://www.mesalek.com/colo/trivia/elev.html

I noticed the variation also in elevation figures. Wikipedia cites two sources 1) www.leadville.com and 2) infoplease.com. I advocate using the "official" figure of the United States Geological Survery, which I will research. T.E. Goodwin 01:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I researched this when I was working for the Leadville Chamber of Commerce many years ago. The official accepted number is 10,152. I couldn't find anyone who would support the 10,430 number, though someone might be able to find it in some newspaper articles. It would have been sometime before 1994, I think. --Mdwyer 02:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Airport Elevation

At an elevation of 9,927' the Leadville Airport is the highest in the United States and the 3rd highest in the world. Source: www.leadvilleairport.com

You can apply that to the article itself by putting it in brackets: [1] However, I think an FAA reference might be better. Especially since I SUSPECT there are other words that need to follow the claim. Like "Highest FAA Airport" or "Highest Permanent Airport" or something like that. I think there are some air strips that are higher (think Alaska), but they aren't full airports somehow. --Mdwyer 02:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I put the fact tag back in. --Mdwyer 20:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll take the tag back out again, after researching it a bit. There are a number of airports higher than Leadville. I downloaded a list of airports from this site: [2], put it in a spreadsheet and sorted by elevation. The database is not complete - it doesn't include leadville - but here are the airports that have airport code assignments above 9927':

LPB/EL ALTO INTERNATIONAL/LA PAZ/BOLIVIA	13313'
POI/CAPITAN NICOLAS ROJAS/POTOSI/BOLIVIA	12913'
JUL/JULIACA/JULIACA/PERU	12546'
ANS/ANDAHUAYLAS/ANDAHUAYLAS/PERU	11300'
CUZ/VELAZCO/ASTETE/CUZCO/PERU	10860'
IXL/LEH/LEH/INDIA	10682'

Four others were listed that did not have airport codes.

I also got a list of airports from the FAA, found at: [3]

They only list US airports, and Leadville ranks as the highest - though there are about a dozen heliports that are higher. So I think we can leave the 'highest airport in the US' distinction, but remove the 'third highest in the world' one. Adagio 21:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Nicely done! I'm pretty sure there's an adjective that makes the #3 claim true, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. I think it had something to do with actually having a manned control tower (Although 'tower' is stretching it a bit at KLXV :) ) or landing lights or something. There are plenty of runways -- some of them little more than dirt roads -- all over the world, and some of them MUST be higher. Still, there's some (totally arbitrary) designation that makes that claim true, I'm sure.

Personally, I don't think it is worth it to find it, though. I think your solution is perfectly good. Thank you again for researching it. --Mdwyer 00:19, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History

This section reads "Many tales from Leadville found their way into H.A.W Tabor's works." I am not aware that Tabor ever wrote anything of note. Is their any substantiation for this? Did someone mistakenly write in Tabor's name instead of that of some novelist?Plazak 17:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

This article is part of WikiProject Colorado, an effort to create, expand, organize, and improve Colorado-related articles to a feature-quality standard.