The NRHP district was later expanded, adding a number of structures along the Harrison Avenue corridor, and making them eligible for historic preservation grants and tax subsidies, too.

[7][8] According to an eyewitness: "At the foot of Chestnut street, a little distance from the Leadville Smeltering Company's works, in an acre plot of ground unfenced, and with the carbonate-like earth thrown up into little heaps.

On a closer inspection, the stranger will see that many of these carbonate mounds are marked by pieces of boards, slabs and sticks.

... [It was a] barren red clay-colored plot [with] no flowery lawns, spouting fountains, shady nooks, grassy plats, nor artistically carved marble.

Here all the vast transportation of a great mining camp passes in daily bustle and confusionis, and the sleep of our dead forever disturbed by the oaths and the 'black snake' of the irreverent freighter [train].