MovieChat Forums > Paint Your Wagon (1969) Discussion > Horace Tabor really existed

Horace Tabor really existed

posted 15 years ago by amazon423
2 replies | jump to latest

If anyone on these boards is from Colorado they should know the name of Horace Tabor. He was one of the early settlers in Denver and quite a major name in the history. He was very wealthy and a mover and shaker. The fact that he was in this movie does not make sense. There is no record I know of that puts him in the California gold fields. His money came from the gold strikes in Colorado. At the end of his life though he lost everything and his wife and daughter lived in poverty.

[–] rizdek 15 years ago

It's probably a different Horace Tabor...maybe a cousin or grand nephew or something.

my god its full of stars

[–] amazon423 15 years ago

Probably thrown into the movie. He would have been 19 or 20 years old at this time in History. The script writer or someone affilitated with this movie found out he was a major part of mining history in the 1800's and decided to write him into the script. The movie did mention some real mining towns in the Mother Lode country of the central Sierra Nevadas near Grass Valley so it wasn't entirely fiction. Just a major part of it.