The YAK is a beloved Leadville and Lake County tradition, revived through the One Community Project to celebrate the stories, voices, and creative spirit that shape our community. The storytelling contest and community event, hosted April 25th, 2025, invited community members to share personal stories, poems, photography, art, and reflections that paint a rich and authentic portrait of who we are. Together, these stories help ground the future vision for Leadville and Lake County in the real hopes, challenges, and connections that define our community today.
There once was a playground and park
whose ballfields were lit after dark:
tennis and softball
or kickball and baseball —
Love Harrison’s Fun Place? On mark!
A radical root laid to rust
in silvery black sandy dust.
Keep Leadville shitty!
Our two mile-high city!
Keep bygone boom days — or bust!
There was an old Baby named Doe.
Her ghost haunts saloons near Saint Joe’s.
Once rich from rushed gold,
alone she died cold
in her Matchless mine, socked with snow.
Twice caught in Tabor hist’ry,
a wish to spite catastrophe.
Small town rural rules,
for Irish mine-fools,
Vaudeville operas — what glory!
There’s massive amounts of blood lead;
tests done by the beltway’s trailhead.
Around Half Moon Creek,
passing gas by Twin Peaks
are horse-joring skiers that shred!
In wake of cross country ski downs,
unsinkable for Molly Brown,
whose Eye in the skies
to mountain magpies
from the Ville’s Interlaken downtowns.
The Delaware’s down by the block
from Melanzana’s egg-plant smocks.
The Rio Grand train
once rolled by Tenth ‘tain;
Trail One Hundred series for jocks.
Eighteen Sixty-Eight, Southern Utes
shared miracles of Guadelupe.
Then Juan Diego
saddled gold burro;
to Cooper’s cook yurts for great views.
I lift up my eyes to the treelines
while dreaming descents on their fall lines;
Malls full of antiques,
refuge for unique,
and dirt bags in old gilded times.
A home for the nomad roamers;
a City on Clouds for the Wheelers.
For mountain mamas,
no drama llamas,
Alpaca rafts on headwaters.
Look East to the Tennessee star,
North of the Manhattan Bar:
There were many signs
this place is divine,
as rainbows arched over our car.