The Cattle Baron's Opera House

Robert E. Stafford ran cattle and money in Colorado County, and in 1886 he spent fifty thousand dollars on a building on Spring Street, then another ten thousand on the curtain, the wings and the stage machinery. He hired Nicholas J. Clayton, the Galveston architect responsible for the Bishop's Palace, to design it. The ground floor held Stafford's own bank and a dry goods store. Above it he put a theatre seating a thousand people, lit by gas chandeliers, with an elaborate hand painted curtain, in a town that then had a few thousand residents in it. The arithmetic never made sense as a business and was not really meant to. It was a cattleman announcing what his town was going to be. For about twenty years it worked, and Columbus got touring companies that skipped much larger places. The opening production was As in a Looking Glass, starring Lillian Russell, who was among the largest names on the American stage at the time. Harry Houdini played here as well, along with the touring companies that worked the rail circuit between Houston and San Antonio. Stafford did not enjoy much of it. He was shot dead in 1890 in a confrontation with a city marshal, and his family kept the building running for years afterwards. It survives, restored, and still stages performances, which makes it one of the oldest working theatres in Texas. The Columbus Historical Preservation Trust looks after it, along with the Santa Claus museum a couple of streets away.