OUR LADY OF LOURDES (1866)

Genteel Georgetown was different from the beginning. Not only the heavenly setting in a spectacular 8,519-foot-high mountain valley but also the early presence of women and children led Father Machebeuf to select this silver town for his third parish.

George and David Griffith found gold and staked out a townsite in 1859, then went home to Kentucky to bring their families out to what was initially called George's Town. While other Colorado mining towns reveled in saloon halls, brothels, and gambling "hells," Georgetown prided itself on erecting Colorado's first opera house, the elegant Hotel de Paris, and prim homes, schools, and churches.

In 1864, Georgetowners built what is now the oldest Episcopal church in Colorado. Two years later, Father Machebeuf began offering Sunday Mass in Brownell Hall and made Georgetown a mission tended by Father Raverdy of St. Mary's in Central City.

Georgetown's miners and their families prayed for their own parish, for which they donated a site on Main Street. In 1872, Bishop Machebeuf appointed John V. Foley the first resident pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes. After a few months, Father Foley was replaced by Thomas McGrath, who completed a small, frame, temporary church by the end of 1872. He then set to work on a permanent, $12,000 brick church with a large single bell tower and spire over the entry. The new church was completed in time for Easter Mass in 1875, and the whole town celebrated with hallelujahs. William J. Howlett served as Georgetown's pastor from 1877 until 1880. Father Howlett found that many miners "seemed to have little time for the church except for funerals, and for grand services on St. Barbara's [the patron saint of miners] day."

Father Howlett was followed as pastor by Nicholas C. Matz, who went to work with the drive and ability that would make him Colorado's second Catholic bishop in 1889. He persuaded Georgetown's silver tycoon, Episcopalian William A. Hamill, to donate a 1,400-pound church bell. Father Matz also installed a hand-carved altar and pews for 400 people, making Our Lady of Lourdes the biggest and finest church in Georgetown.

Father Matz converted the old frame church into a rectory where he lived with his sister, who kept house for him. He constructed a new brick school in 1880 and moved in the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet to staff it. By 1885, 140 boys and girls were reciting lessons there. The sisters also opened, in 1877, Georgetown's first and only hospital, initially using the Denim House, then building a two-story brick hospital on the north side of the church. Clear Creek County miners of all faiths gave a dollar a month to St. Joseph Hospital, which entitled them to free and tender care from Mother Theolinda and her eight nurse/nuns. Churchgoers soon filled Our Lady of Lourdes to capacity, and Bishop Machebeuf consented to construction of another church two miles further up Clear Creek at Silver Plume. A small frame chapel, St. Patrick's, was constructed in 1876 with carved wooden front doors supposedly shipped from Italy. An aged Italian miner, after day labor in the Pelican Mine, spent his nights in the church on a scaffold, painting wall and ceiling murals.

Thanks to the "Miracle of Silver Plume," St. Patrick's survived the fire of 1884 that destroyed the surrounding buildings. While men fought the fire, women and children knelt in front of the little church in prayer. Not a spark fell on St. Patrick's, which glistened a sparkling white against the blackened, smoking ruins of the town. In thanksgiving, devout miners enlarged St. Patrick's, turning the original structure to face east and west and serve as a transept for the new nave added to face south, where it still fronts Main Street.

Silver Plume's Buckley family, whose eight sons formed most of the town's crackerjack baseball team, were mainstays of St. Patrick's. They helped maintain the little church, closed after the 1893 silver crash. To this day, the altar of St. Patrick's, which for years was stored in the back of of the Buckley Brothers Livery and General Store, may be seen in the old schoolhouse now used as the Silver Plume Museum. Two blocks away, quaint St. Patrick Church, miraculous survivor of the 1884 fire, stands well-preserved, a cherished landmark.

Fire also struck Georgetown, where Our Lady of Lourdes was not as fortunate as St. Patrick's. A spark from a passing locomotive started the January 1917 blaze that destroyed both the church and the rectory. Only the stations of the cross, the statues, and the candlelabra were saved for use in the third, present church. This simple building, made from bricks salvaged from its predecessor, was erected on the site of a former Methodist church. Bishop Tihen dedicated it on February 23, 1919.

After Father Matz left in 1885, a long line of short term pastors guided the Georgetown parish, which included a church, rectory, school, hospital, and convent. Georgetown pastors tended to St. Patrick's mission at Silver Plume and a mission in Empire until both were closed, probably during the late 1890s.

Georgetown Catholics, like their brothers and sisters elsewhere, experienced some discrimination and snide remarks. For example, William D. Copeland's One Man's Georgetown ridiculed Catholics as "different" with their "strange statues and paintings" and because "they had to get up real early on Sunday mornings and go to Mass. Of course, this was compensated for by their being allowed to play ball on Sunday afternoon, and use strong drink, and be forgiven once a week by the priest for all they might have done amiss." Just as shocking to this Methodist was the "gambling" by which "the Catholic ladies raised considerable money with raffles" to benefit Our Lady of Lourdes. Such predjudice reflected a distasteful but real part of the Catholic experience in Colorado.

After the silver crash, Georgetown's population declined drastically. From 500, the parish shrank to less than 100 members. The school closed in 1913, followed in 1914 by the hospital. Christopher V. Walsh served as pastor from 1930 to 1945, keeping the church alive while Georgetown's population sank below 300. In 1945, Our Lady of Lourdes became a mission of St. Paul's in Idaho Springs.

Nowadays, Georgetown's tiny flock of Catholics gather at 5 o'clock every Saturday evening for a Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes and pray for this small mountain parish, just as their predecessors did in the 1860s during the weekly visits of Father Machebeuf.