Mary Miller
Mary Miller could best be described as a woman of great vision. She and her husband Lafayette moved to the Boulder County ranch that would become the town named for him and in the mid 1870s discovered a vast vein of coal in the area. Mary Miller wisely kept claim to all the mineral rights and received royalties from mines on her property such as the Cannon and the Simpson.
The town was laid out about 1888-1889 and the original town deeds stipulated that no alcoholic beverages could be sold east of what is now Public Road, a rule that remained in effect until the early 1980s. She was devoted to the temperance movement and once ran for state treasurer on the Prohibition party ticket.
She organized the modest, family-run Miller Bank in 1892, which grew and in 1902 became Lafayette Bank. Mary Miller was elected its first president and at the time was likely the only female bank president in the world. In 1914, overburdened by about $90,000 in bad loans to the United Mine Workers, the bank, then located at 400 East Simpson, collapsed.
She was known as the Mother of Lafayette, in part for her tireless organizing of local clubs and fraternal organization, and for her calm demeanor in the face of adversity that may have reached its worst on Jan. 24, 1900, when the town burned.
In 1892, she built the Congregational Church at 300 East Simpson St. that has since been converted to a community theater and was recently rechristened the Mary Miller Theater.
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