We got the backstage tour of the Homestake Opera House in Lead yesterday. Fascinating place, both for what it once was and for what it is now.

What it was: A palace.

Built in 1914, the Homestake Opera House and Recreation Center was a gift from Phoebe Hearst, widow of mining magnate George Hearst, to Lead’s hard-working hardrock gold miners and their families. It had a 1,000-seat theater, an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, a free library, billiard rooms and meeting rooms.

What is is: Dark, sooty and a little creepy, but with a glimmer of what it could become once again.

Many areas of the theater are still badly damaged 24 years after a fire gutted the Opera House auditorium. The community has spent $3 million to rebuild the roof, the stage, the floor and balcony. It’s a functional theater, where concerts and plays are staged today. But they have a long way to go before it will be restored to its former glory. The auditorium walls still bear the scars of the fire. The balcony and the old theater boxes can’t be used. Not yet.

Jim O’Grady, executive director of the Historic Homestake Opera House Society, showed us around the blackened area below the stage that was once the dressing rooms. He showed us the room below that, where the boilers and the coal bins used to be.

He showed us the former bowling alley, a large, leaky room that is now used as a firing range. (The photo above was taken in the former bowling ally. Jim is on the left; I’m on the right.)

The most interesting place for me was the former swimming pool. Crews have covered the pool with steel studs and a layer of concrete. It’s now used for offices and storage. You can still see the tilework that surrounded the pool.

And if you go around a corner, down some stairs and around a couple more corners, you find yourself inside the entombed swimming pool. The tile mosaic lettering around the sides still spell “DEEP.” and the former ladder protrudes down from the concrete ceilings. The tile floor tapers up to the shallow end.

And mind that most of these areas are illuminated by only a bare lightbulb, or a flashlight in Jim’s hand. Very spooky. In fact, each Halloween the Opera House society turns these darkened corners into a haunted house.

But out in the lobby, everything has been fully restored. It’s bright, colorful and probably looking better than it did in 1914. And the former free library has been turned into high-ceilinged offices. (In this photo, Jim, center, shows plaster castings to Derek Olso, left, and Monte Amende, right. Notice the bright walls.)

The Society is trying to raise another $4 million to finish the job. And when they do, Phoebe Hearst would be proud of the Homestake Opera House once again.