wild woman

Laura Evans was one of the last scarlet women to join the ranks of Colorado’s madams, and when she died in April of 1953, she was over ninety years old.  According to Laura, she grew up in the South, married at age seventeen, deserted her husband and baby daughter, changed her name, and became a...

In 1865, the manager of the Melodeon Theatre in Virginia City, Nevada, placarded every cliff and signboard on Sun Mountain with posters announcing the coming of Antoinette Adams, the first actress to appear in the town.  Enthusiasm was boundless as the red-letter day approached, and an opening night, every bench, corner, and windowsill of the...

Denver’s Holladay Street, the most wicked street in the West in the 1870s and 1880s, was the street of nobody’s women and everybody’s women.  Approximately one thousand “brides of the multitude” as they were called, were available in the imposing parlor houses or lowly cribs which lines both sides of the street for three blocks....

Emma Wixom rose from the obscurity of a small Nevada mining town to win acclaim as Emma Nevada.  Born in the California mining camp of Alpha Diggin’s in 1859, Emma and her parents joined the rush east to the silver boom at Austin, Nevada.  There, her fine voice was recognized by Mrs. S. Prisk, one...

Mrs. Irene McCready and her companion-lover James McCabe debarked from the ship the Oregon in April 1849.  McCabe was one of the backers of the El Dorado gambling hall which opened not long after his arrival.  It was money wisely invested; no miner’s pick and shovel ever earned so much gold. Young Baynard Taylor, a...

In Dodge City, Kansas, the important men made their headquarters at the Long Branch Saloon, opening in 1883 by Charles Bassett, Ford County’s first Sheriff, and A. J. Peacock.  The Long Branch offered a high-toned sporting atmosphere, with only top-grade liquor served at the bar. Its customers included railroad men, cattle kings, buffalo hunters, and...

In 1898, Dawson City in the Yukon Territory was the heart of the richest gold country on the continent.  To its theaters and dance halls the miners came for relief from the long, lonely hours spent working on their claims.  They laughed, drank, and threw their gold dust recklessly about. The amenities offered in Dawson...

The soiled dove with the heart of gold is a stock character in thousands of stories about the Old West, and Idaho had such a character.  “Diamond-tooth Lil” was her name, and she was more famous for her tooth of gold than for her heart of gold. Like most characters in western lore, Lil devoted...