Wining, Dining, and Mining

There's a gamut of restaurants to chose from when scouting the best locations for an evening of wining and dining, but few also offer the atmosphere of mining. The matchbook pictured, for Baby Doe's Matchless Mine, actually tells no tale- until you dig a little deeper.

The top layer is the namesake for this late 20th Century restaurant chain, Elizabeth "Baby Doe" Tabor. Her rags to riches to rags story has been told in countless books, movies, and even an opera. Widowed at an early age and then abandoned by her adult daughters, she clung to the only things she had left, a tiny cabin and a closed silver mine.

Her fate as a tragic figure in American history was sealed when she was found frozen to death inside her sparse cabin in 1935. Her cabin and the adjacent Matchless Mine have been a Leadville, Colorado tourist attraction ever since, and registered as a National Historic Place.

The second layer, as we dig deeper, takes us back to 1978 when Specialty Restaurant Corp. of Anaheim, CA developed the concept for a dining establishment built to resemble a ramshackle mine. Founder David Tallichet located hillside areas in Birmingham, AL, Columbus, OH, Atlanta, GA, Dallas, TX, Denver, CO, Los Angeles, CA, and Kansas City, MO that would offer diners downtown skyline views and the very popular beer cheese soup.

A third, deeper layer, surfaces at the Kansas City location.  Like the others, it was constructed of weathered wood, rusty metal, and accentuated with mining cars, a windmill, and perhaps some livestock for a true, rustic dining experience. With 10 dining rooms, a lounge, and giftshop, it was a popular dining destination after its September 1980 opening.

But just like its namesake, the restaurant Baby Doe's experienced a tragic death when diners felt the building shift in July 1985.  The restaurant was quickly evacuated as gaps in the flooring grew wider. After the building was declared unstable, it was shuttered and vacant for several years, looking more and more like the abandoned mine it was built to resemble. Eventually, it was demolished after declaring the area was too unstable to repair or rebuild.

One by one, the remaining locations closed, for various reasons, and have been demolished to make way for new development. Seems nobody wants an abandoned mine these days, even with a skyline view.

NOTE: While both versions of the restaurant's matchbook have a photo of Baby Doe on the cover, the older, and more worn example (perhaps it was found in a mine) reads Baby Doe, while the version pictured at top reads Baby Doe's. Both are from the Kansas City location, which was located on W. 26th Terrace at Bi-State Drive, featuring a west side downtown view.