CENTRAL CITY — After all these years, you'd think we'd have heard just about everything there is to know about Central City's mining history. But John Kittredge always seems to have another story up his sleeve.

On Saturday, October 24, Kittredge gave a talk at Monte Lobo in Central City about women in mining. The event was hosted by the Belvidere Foundation and drew a small crowd, including Central City Council members Zane Plsek, Marcia Enloe, and Kathy Walker.

Kittredge brought along his handwritten notes, a few rocks, and a whole lot of history. This time he talked about some of the women who owned mines, ran them, and in a few cases, actually worked underground.

"Virtually everyone in this community was to one extent or another in the mining business," he said.

Mary Jane Aduddell was one of them. Her husband, Dr. Robert Aduddell, was a surgeon who reportedly spent some of his Saturday nights stitching up miners after fights in Nevadaville. Mary Jane helped by threading his surgical needles.

But she had a mining business of her own. She patented claims near the Frontenac Mine in Willis Gulch, hired workers, and continued running things long after her husband died.

"She really was the boss," Kittredge said.

Catherine Cameron started out with a dressmaking shop on Main Street before getting into mining. And she apparently knew what she was doing. In 1899, she sold one of her mines for $40,000, which was quite a sum back then.

"She was really on top of it," Kittredge said. "She was something."

There was Baby Doe Tabor, whose real name was Elizabeth McCourt Tabor. She actually went underground to work at the Fourth of July Mine near Nevadaville.

Kittredge said he found it interesting that the newspapers at the time didn't seem to make much fuss about a woman working in a mine. "Nobody said that this was something she should not be doing."

And then there was Nanny Richards. She ran a boarding house in Nevadaville, raised five daughters, and somehow found time to invest in the Alps Mine in Russell Gulch.

She had some bad luck along the way. Once, she fell 12 feet into a prospect hole and had to be pulled out. And for some reason, her cows kept dying. Some were apparently poisoned.

Kittredge had his suspicions about a neighbor, although he found nothing that could prove that claim.

"How often does a cow get poisoned?" he asked.

He also talked about Catherine Sutton and Catherine Rafferty, two widows who took over mining operations after their husbands died. Some of these women did quite well for themselves. Others weren't so lucky.

Kittredge is a wealth of information, and he could fill much more than an hour-and-a-half time slot. He told stories about old lawsuits, buildings that are long gone, and a miner who broke his leg in two places while trying to steal a base during a baseball game.

And there's still more history out there somewhere, Kittredge figures, if someone takes the time to look.

"Somebody's got a diary," he said, "somebody's got photographs."

The Belvidere Foundation, which is working to restore the historic Belvidere Theatre and Shoofly building, hosts programs like this to keep Central City's history alive and bring the community together.