Forget everything you thought you knew about Mrs. Elizabeth Bonduel Tabor.

For over 80 years, historians and authors alike have filled dozens of books describing her as crazy or mad. They claim that Mrs. Tabor spent 36 years living the life of a hermit, inside an old tool shed, located at a Silver Mine she didn’t even own…but nothing could be farther from the truth. Marrying first for money, then engaging in two scandalous affairs, Elizabeth Tabor set social protocol aside to become the Silver queen of Colorado, before her world came crashing down.

Following the death of her second husband and with two children to feed, she held her head high and fought the corrupt men who stole her deceased husband’s fortune and rebuilt a new life for her daughters. Building her own alliances and becoming a successful business woman and mine owner, she watched in despair as her oldest daughter married a close family member, while her youngest daughter slid into alcoholism and prostitution. Desperate for a distraction, Elizabeth Tabor spent the warm Colorado months dressing in men’s overalls and digging silver ore from her mines by hand, until just before her death at the age of 80.

From running inside a burning apartment building to save a cat, dressing nude roman statues in lingerie to piss off the neighbors, fighting alongside the Unsinkable Molly Brown for women’s rights and chasing away trespassers with a loaded shot gun, Elizabeth Tabor held onto her pride and her Catholic faith with a firm fist, until her dying breath.

Tracy Beach is the author of The Tunnels Under Our Feet - Colorado’s Forgotten Hollow Sidewalks and My Life As a Whore - The Biography of Madam Laura Evens. Tracy, who was raised in Salida, Colorado, will soon be releasing her first true crime biography, entitled “Michael”.