April Monthly Lecture: Ellen Kingman Fisher

Local author, Ellen Kingman Fisher, discusses her historical fiction novels about mining in Colorado.  Learn about Nathaniel Peter Hill (1832-1900) who was a mining entrepreneur and US senator from Colorado. Hill’s work in Black Hawk was significant in our state’s history.

Dr. Fisher was a senior program officer with the Gates Family Foundation and the Director of Denver’s Molly Brown House Museum. She served on the board of the Colorado State Historical Society (History Colorado) for 28 years and on the Advisory Board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation for nine years. She was president of the Junior League of Denver. Historic Denver gave her Molly Brown Spirit Award for community service and the University of Colorado at Denver the Alumni Recognition Award for her role in developing the public history program.

Her first novel, Hill’s Gold, published in 2018, was awarded first place in historical fiction by the Colorado Independent Publishers Association and was also a finalist in the Colorado Authors League’s western fiction category.

The Price of a Contract, published in 2022, is the second in a series of historical novels with the backdrop of business history. The focus is on the telegraph which changed society in the 19th century as much as the internet has contemporary life.

The author and her family have spent most of their lives in Colorado. She has climbed all of Colorado’s fourteeners as well as Mt. Rainier and Kilimanjaro.