Description

Original Publisher’s Synopsis:

John and Mary Elitch arrived in Colorado in 1880, and their first business venture was a restaurant. In 1888, they bought the sixteen-acre Chilcott Farm in the Highlands, northwest of Denver. On May 1, 1890, the couple opened Elitch’s Zoological Gardens, which featured a band in the gazebo, café, children’s play area, and vaudeville performances, in addition to the zoo. John commenced planning a theater, then unexpectedly died in 1891 before the park’s second season, leaving thirty-four-year-old Mary on her own. She resolved to keep the Gardens going, successfully built the playhouse, and journeyed to both New York and San Francisco for the winter season, auditioning plays and recruiting players to appear during the summer in Colorado. Elitch’s Theatre in the Gardens presented its first full season in 1893 and became the longest-running summer stock theater in the U.S., featuring artists like Sarah Bernhardt and Douglas Fairbanks as special guest performers. Mary Elitch was the first female zookeeper, the first woman to run a botanic garden, and one of the first woman to own a theatre in the United States. This is the biography of a woman who overcame the challenges of widowhood, learned to be a businesswoman, and as the animating spirit of Elitch’s Gardens, became one of Denver’s cultural institutions — Mary Elitch Long.