wild woman of the west

The reflections staring back at ballerina Giuseppina Morlacchi showed a tired, dark-haired woman with bloodshot eyes and a pale face.  She had been up most of the night memorizing lines for a melodrama she was to appear in entitled “The Scouts of the Prairie.” The unique Western show would premiere at a massive amphitheater in...

California’s first Chinese settlers, two men and one woman, reached San Francisco in February 1848, aboard the brig Eagle. Sometime later that year, or early in 1849, a second Chinese woman arrived – Ah Toy, a twenty-year old prostitute. Ah Toy’s first crib was a small shanty in an ally off Clay Street just above...

Two of the most ferocious dance-hall girls in the Yukon in the 1880s were called the Oregon Mare and the Grizzly Bear.  Neither could be described as pretty; the Grizzly’s appearance was really fearsome because she had had one eye gouged out in a fight.  The continued presence of these two in the dance hall...

Deadwood’s first dance hall opened May 1, 1876, with only the owner’s wife and daughter to entertain the customers; six women of more questionable virtue were soon added to the staff. Within a month, two more dance halls opened their doors. These were quickly joined by the variety theaters where a customer might be sensuously...

In the book Incidents of Land and Water, written by Mrs. D. B. Bates in 1857, Bates related the story of a woman named Lillie Lee, whose widowed mother brought her to California to seek a home for both of them.  Mrs. Bates shuddered to report that Lillie’s thoughtless mother brought a young, lovely girl...

No madam combined beauty and tragedy more poignantly than Ada Lamont, a dark-eyed beauty of nineteen, she first arrived in Denver in the late summer of 1858, coming from a solid Midwestern family.  At seventeen, she had married a young minister, in a union which friends regarded as perfect. The young bride took great pride...

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...