Albert Eugene Reynolds was the embodiment of the American dream: a young man from a modest home in the East, he made a fortune in the West of the late nineteenth century. Intelligence, industry, and luck assured his success as a military sutler, Indian trader, overland freighter, and cattle rancher, and as the owner and operator of silver and gold mines.

Reynolds lived a quiet life and shunned publicity. His remarkable exploits were generally unknown outside a close circle of friends and associates in his lifetime, and he has been virtually unknown since his death. In this biography, based on newly available personal and business papers, Lee Scamehorn demonstrates the conspicuous role Reynolds played in the settlement and development of the American West.

Unlike most of his wealthy contemporaries, Reynolds never lost faith in mining and did not use his profits to launch a new career in banking, transportation, or real-estate development. Through more than four decades, from 1879 until his death in 1921, he struggled against financial difficulties and continued to work in Colorado's mining industry. Reynolds's activities, and those of his successors, reveal the causes and consequences of hard-rock mining's decline in the twentieth century.

Scamehorn's somber conclusion clearly demonstrates what happens to the American dream when it collides with reality.