IT was time to get away from Denver and its summit madness and head to Leadville, high up in the Rockies. At 10,152 feet, it is the loftiest town in the US.
The road out of Denver first crossed the front range of the Rockies, with Buffalo Bill's grave on one side and the gleaming statue to Mother Cabrini, the first canonised US saint, on the other. Ahead lay the snow-capped peaks of the Continental Divide. We cheated here as we went under the divide through the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel.
We were following in the tracks of some distinguished Irish forebears, such as Oscar Wilde, who in April 1882 made the ascent by train from Denver to Leadville to play to the tough miners in the Tabor Opera House. It has been lovingly preserved by Evelyn Furrman, now in her 80s, in the same condition Wilde would have seen it.
So is most of The Silver Dollar saloon across the street, where Wilde went for a drink after a performance hardly a word of which his audience could understand as they sat or snoozed with their guns on their thighs.
But they were fascinated by Wilde's flowing locks and outfit, which was an elegant black velvet suit, knee britches and black stockings, a Byron collar and a cluster of diamonds on his shirtfront.
He chose to speak in a monotone on "The Practical Application of the Aesthetic Theory to Exterior and Interior House Decoration with Observations on Dress and Personal Ornament". He made so many references to the 16th-century Italian artist, Benvenuto Cellini, that some of his audience wanted to know why Oscar had not brought the artist with him.
When they were told he had been dead for some time, they wanted to know, "Who shot him?" Wilde's reply has not been recorded.
The miners brought Wilde over to the saloon then called Pap Wyman's. The thing that most impressed him was the sign over the piano which said "Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best." Wilde later said that this was the only rational method of art criticism he had ever come across.
We bought drinks on the house in memory of Oscar - there was only one other customer there - while the barman, Tony McMahon, son of the owner, Patricia, explained that there are two St Patrick's Days in Leadville, with the next one coming up on September 20th.
We did not follow Wilde's dining experience. The miners had got to like him so much that they invited him to dinner at the bottom of the Matchless mine, which he descended in a bucket, dressed this time in a rubber suit. He later reported: "I had supper. The first course was whisky, the second whisky and the third whisky."
Leadville was a tough town in those days but it was booming from the rich silver strikes which were making some of the prospectors, such as the three Irish brothers, John, Charles and Patrick Gallagher, millionaires. The Opera House, built to give the town some culture, was on the "Silver Circuit" for well-known orchestras, actors and artists, such as Sarah Bernhardt, Houdini and Harry Lauder.
Dracula's Clontarf creator, Bram Stoker, went there as the stage manager to the Henry Irving touring company. Once when the town was frozen up, a circus was put on in the Opera House, as was the Ben Hur chariot rave.
Horace Tabor, who founded the Opera House, became a multi-millionaire by staking some lucky silver prospectors. He caused scandal when he dumped his wife, Augusta, and fell for Baby Doe McCourt, who had come to Leadville to meet and capture the Silver King.
But he and much of Leadville were ruined in the Great Silver Crash of 1893 when the government went off the silver standard. He kept hoping his Matchless mine would prosper again and told Baby Doe to stick with it after his death.
She did and was found frozen to death there in 1935. The rise and tragic fall of the Tabors was turned into an opera and a film.
Another Leadville lady who became famous was the "Unsinkable Molly Brown", a survivor of the Titanic disaster whose actions to aid other survivors made her famous across the US. Until then she had been frozen out of polite Denver society as the vulgar barmaid wife of a nouveau riche miner from Leadville.
Legend has it that she used a loaded Colt .45 to keep the survivors rowing in lifeboat No 6 and that she stripped to her corset to share her clothing with shivering passengers. She was said to be descended from an Irish peer.
The ghosts of Leadville's heroes and heroines are easy to conjure up as you walk past the scenes of their exploits and look up at the snow-capped Rockies. Irish names abound. Even Unsinkable Molly was born Margaret Tobin.
Sometimes the Irish were on the receiving end. Martin Duggan from Co Limerick was sheriff in Leadville in 1880 but was too quick on the trigger. The wife of one of his victims, Louis Lamb, swore that she would wear widow's weeds until someone did him in and she would then dance on his grave.
Duggan was fatally wounded seven years later outside the Texas House saloon but refused to say who shot him. "I'll die before ever I tell you," were his last words. Mrs Lamb handed her widow's weeds to Mrs Duggan and did a dance in front of Texas House.
Come to think of it, maybe Duggan shot Wilde's friend, Benvenuto Cellini, and Oscar had come to Leadville to revenge him but got led astray by the miners.