Leadville was going the way of Colorado's ghost towns, until Ken Chlouber proposed an ultramarathon at 10,000 feet

As Colorado marks 150 years of statehood, Leadville offers a classic example of reinvention. The city lost its major employer and thousands of jobs, and it responded by building something remarkable: a race that drew athletes through some of the most breathtaking and brutal terrain in the Rocky Mountains. It all grew out of desperation.

The mining days in Leadville are a thing of the past, but they were good while they lasted. Generations of workers descended into the depths of the mines in the area.

The Climax Mine was the big one 50 years ago. It cranked out molybdenum, a rock used to strengthen steel.

Ken Chlouber worked there as a shift boss, and the pay was good.

"I loved that job," said the city resident, who eventually became a politician and served several terms in the Colorado House and Senate. "My job was to dynamite them, making little rocks out of them. Then we could put them on a conveyor belt and they'd go to the surface."

But in the early 1980s, molybdenum prices tanked, and Chlouber was called in by his boss. He and his crew were to go home. It was over.

"That lives with me just on a daily, daily if not every-moment basis here in Leadville -- that night that that mine closed," he said. "That instant, we lost 3,250 jobs in Leadville. That was in a community of about 4,000 to 5,000. That was everybody."

Colorado's highest city fell into despair. After the Climax Mine ceased operations, the economy went into the tank.

"We had no economy. We didn't have a tank for it to go in," Chlouber said.

Homes were given away.

"The realtor would give you a handful of keys," he said. "He'd go 'Pick out the one you want.'"

Chlouber and other local leaders had a problem. He remembers what former Gov. Dick Lamm told them: "You've got a place where everybody wants to come to. You've got to get them to stay overnight, to spend money. Because you've got to save your schools, you've got to save your hospital. You lose either one of those? You're a ghost town."

"He said the magic words to me. He said 'The key to getting them to spend money is that they stay overnight.' And boy, the light went on. (I thought) 'I bet if they run 100 miles they're going to stay overnight,'" he said.     

Chlouber had found his big idea to help his mountain community. He had heard of a couple of ultramarathons. Why not do one in Lake County at 10,000 feet?

Some people thought his idea was crazy, including the local hospital administrator.

"He said, 'No. No way. You're not getting any help from this hospital. You can't run 100 miles at 10,000 feet. You're going to kill somebody.' And I said, 'If we do, then we will be famous, won't we?' At this point I'm getting ready to knock him through the window," Chlouber said.

In the early days of the Leadville 100, a few dozen runners participated in the race. But the numbers grew, and the race got quite a bit of media attention. Even though he still bears shotgun pellets in his knee from a hunting accident when he was young, Chlouber ran in the race himself several times.

Some visitors who came for the race decided to stay in Leadville permanently. And the ultramarathon got so big that organizers added a 100 mile mountain bike race, which became a big deal in its own right.

"More people think they can do 100 miles on a bike than they can on a run. They can't, but they think they can," he said.

The city also added a summer full of other weekend events to help build back the economy.

Leadville has become a tourist town -- a place where athletic excellence filled a hole, with a race that is a marquee event among athletic events in a state that's full of them. Its roots are planted in hardship, in a place where that hardship didn't defeat the community.

"They'll have that grit inside them, or they won't stay here," Chlouber said. "Not only do you have to dig deep in Leadville, you've got to breathe deep. If you're not digging deep and breathing deep, well you'd better go downhill."

The Climax Mine reopened years ago and now focuses on surface mining. The employee numbers are in the low hundreds rather than the thousands these days.