The Wild West's Nevada Bordellos

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Our review of some of Nevada's Wild West towns along Highway 50 and Interstate 80 reveal some of the motives westward travelers and frontier settlers had in migrating from points east. Watering holes and bodies of water along overland trails (like the existence of the trails themselves); the building of the Transcontinental Railroad; discoveries of silver, gold, lead, and other ores; and politics brought men, women, and children west, where the frontier seemed a land of possibilities and, perhaps, for some, wealth, as well as adventure.

We can pretty well guess why prostitution was widespread throughout the West. There were few women and lots of men. The law of supply and demand made brothels lucrative business ventures—for their owners, at least—and provided employment for women, which was scarce on the frontier. There were, after all, only so much demand for laundresses, schoolmarms, seamstresses, store clerks, waitresses, and the like, and, aside from these occupations, respectable women had few options. Sometimes, a woman became a “soiled dove” simply because she had no other alternative.

 

Today, Donna's Ranch continues to cater to its clientele.Source: Yelp

What else can we discern by investigating some of the brothels known to have existed in Nevada during the nineteenth century? A fairly well documented establishment of this type was Donna's Ranch in Wells. During its Wild West heyday, this bordello, which has been in operation since 1867, had two major types of clients: the men constructing the Central Pacific Railroad and the cowboys who drove herds to the railroad's cattle-boarding locations and sometimes paid for the prostitutes' services with cows in lieu of dollars. Its more recent owners have included heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey (1895-1983).

 The Desert Club's contemporary look. Source: Desert Club Girls

 The Desert Club, a Battle Mountain brothel that first opened its doors in the late 1800s, includes only five rooms. It's back in business, having reopened under new management in 2016, after closing in 1991, having been temporarily transformed into a mining museum during the interim. Unfortunately, nothing much is known about its operations during its frontier days.

 

The whips on the wall of a bedroom at today's Rainey's Dance Hall (now Big Four) provide unique decor. Source: booked.net

 

 Rainey's Dance Hall was open for business beginning in the late 1800s. As Big Four, it still operates in Ely, Nevada, but, of course, under new ownership. It has in common with the Desert Club the fact that little remains known of its glory days.

The Pussycat Ranch (aka Pussycat Saloon, aka Pussycat Brothel) once stood on Riverside Street in Winnemucca, but it has since not only close but been demolished. In its flower, the Pussycat boasted a large, ornate bar, among its other diversions.

The Cosmopolitan, presumably, has seen better days. Source: nevadaadventures.com

Located in Belmont, the Cosmopolitan Saloon satisfied the needs of his clientele during the latter half of the 1800s. The July 27, 1874, edition of the Belmont Courier's June 27, 1874, noted that the law provided the means by which to quickly suppress such business enterprises and suggested that local government officials had the moral duty to do so. Such a “hurdy dance house,” the paper proclaimed was “a moral wrong,” if ever there was one, injurious to young and old alike, should they succumb to the establishment's “alluring temptations.”

The Cosmopolitan was a dangerous place to visit because of the gunfire that sometimes occurred on the premises as well, the article noted, although, admittedly, recent shootings had not resulted in any fatalities. Should a death occur as the result of such irresponsible conduct, however, the Courier reckoned that the county was likely to bear a cost of “$3,000 to $10,000 to prosecute the case.”

In commenting on the Courier's article, in “Hurdy houses, hurdy girls flourished in boom towns,” an installment in the Pahrump Valley Times's series of articles concerning Nevada's “history of prostitution,” the author, historian Bob McCracken, points out that “prostitutes were among the first arrivals in a mining boom town” and that they were held in esteem by men, who “generally saw them as tough and resourceful, passionate and fun-loving people with big hearts who provided an essential human service.”

 Belmont, Nevada. Source: Pinterest

Among the other bordellos that the article mentions is the Crook Shop. Regarding this establishment, McCracken reports on the double standard of the times regarding men, women, and prostitution. Men who availed themselves of “hurdy girls” might retain their respectability; the prostitutes, on the other hand, who were guilty of the same risque behavior, were regarded as disgraceful:

“It was noted that a woman who danced in the Crook Shop (a local brothel) was not admitted to a 'respectable party' while the man who danced with the 'hurdy-gurdy girl' suffered no diminished in respectability. Why should that be, the item asked: 'If there is any difference between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, we confess our ignorance' (Belmont Courier, June 27, 1874).”

  Hurdy gurdy girl. Source: hurdygurdyanthropology.
 

Note: Most historians make a distinction between "hurdy gurdy girls," German frauleins who played the hurdy gurdy and danced with men for a price (usually fifty cents per dance and another fifty cents for the couple's drinks) and "soiled doves" who entertained their clients in a much more "intimate" manner.

Available NOW on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited!: On the Track of Vengeance

 

The runaway action never stops in On the Track of Vengeance, the fourth book in An Adventure of the Old West series.
 
When outlaw gangs sabotage railroads, resulting in the deaths of innocent passengers and crew members, the president of the United States becomes directly involved, appointing Bane Messenger a U.S. marshal answerable to him alone.
 
Teamed with trustworthy deputies, Bane takes on the desperate men, who care only for vengeance and are willing to do anything to strike back at the railroads and the government they blame for their misfortunes.
 
But the stakes soar when Bane learns that the outlaws plan to sabotage a train carrying his wife and father. With their lives hanging in the balance and no way to warn them, Bane races to the scene. Can he stop the outlaws in time or will Pamela and Bradford become the latest victims of the cruel men who care for nothing but vengeance?

All Aboard! The Transcontinental Railroad Board Game

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

As President Chester Alan Arthur points out in On the Track of Vengeance, the fourth novel of An Adventure of the Old West series, “The transcontinental railroad has wrought great changes, mostly for the good of the country.” (The problems associated with the unprecedented project—many of which were caused by the project's leaders themselves—form the backbone of the novel's plot.)

Despite the problems associated with its construction, the building of a railroad that spanned the continent, “from sea to shining sea,” was, by any standard of measure, a momentous accomplishment, and it was celebrated and commemorated in various ways, one of which was the creation of The Transcontinental Railroad board game.

According to the Board Game Geek website, the game's theme is “the building of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's [sic].” Two players, one of whom represents the Union Pacific Railroad, the other of whom plays for the Central Pacific Railroad, “draw from a common deck of 80 cards,” six of the “seven suits” of which symbolize one of the needs associated with the construction of the railroad, such as “jobs, money, [and] supplies.” The seventh suit represents difficulties the construction project encounters. In play resembling that of poker, the players vie for markers, and the “first to get 100” of these tokens completes his or her “line to Promontory Summit first,” winning the game.

The game gives players a sense of the scope and difficulty of the railroad's construction and offers an opportunity to discuss, research, and learn more about the biggest engineering, technological, and construction feat of nineteenth-century America.

The Transcontinental Railroad: Challenges and Innovations

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Active member of Western Writers of America

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The transcontinental railroad, stretching 1,776 miles, from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, was America's greatest 19th-century achievement. It revolutionized communication, united the nation's eastern and western halves, and expedited both transportation and commerce.

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What had been an arduous journey of four to sixth months by stagecoach or a couple of months by ship, requiring the crossing of Panama (there was no canal until 1914), which offered the danger of contracting malaria, was cut to a mere two weeks, and the cost of travel was reduced by 90 percent!¹

However, to complete the railroad, both the Pacific Central Railroad (PCRR), which built the railroad from the San Francisco, California, eastward, and its partner and rival, the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR), which built the railroad from the Omaha, Nebraska, westward², had to overcome major obstacles. The terrain and weather were the PCRR's major obstacles, while personnel were the UPRR's greatest impediment.

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To advance westward, a trestle or a bridge had to be built for every river and gorge. To construct a bridge over a river, workers used a steam-powered pile-driver, which drove posts of wood into the bottom of the river to support the bridges.³

But the Sierra Nevada Mountains, between California and northern Nevada, represented the greatest obstacle to PCRR's engineers. Using black powder and hammers and chisels, Chinese workers and others had to blast and carve ledges out of the sheer cliffs and precipitous rock faces so track could be laid for trains. Cape Horn is an example of the tremendous challenge these mountains posed.⁴

Another impediment the PCRR had to overcome was “a cemented gravel hill” in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Bloomer Ranch. Engineer Theodore Judah's solution to the problem was to cut a “wedge” through the hill.”⁵ The project, known as Bloomer's Cut, produced an 800-foot-long channel that is 63-feet-deep at its greatest depth.⁶

In addition, the PCRR had to blast 15 tunnels through the mountains.⁷ 

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To blast the rock in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, workers on ropes were lowered down cliffs. Dangling, they pounded sharpened rods of iron into the rock with hammers, stuffed the holes with black powder, set fuses, and shouted to be hauled up. Instead of ropes, Chinese workers used reed baskets. The work was dangerous, resulting in many workers' deaths.⁸

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The Summit Tunnel indicates the magnitude of this requirement:

In the spring of 1868, the Sierra Nevada were finally "conquered" by the Central Pacific Railroad . . . after almost three years of sustained construction effort by mainly Chinese laborers, with the successful completion at Donner Pass of its 1,659-foot. . . Tunnel #6 and associated grade, thus permitting the establishment of commercial transportation en masse of passengers and freight over the Sierra for the first time. Following a route first surveyed and proposed by CPRR's original Chief Engineer, Theodore D. Judah (1826–1863), the construction of the four tunnels, several miles of snowsheds and two Chinese Walls necessary to breach Donner Summit constituted the most difficult engineering and construction challenge of the original Sacramento-Ogden CPRR route.⁹

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Tunneling was a time-consuming and dangerous undertaking. Workers averaged about one-foot of progress per day by drilling and packing holes with black powder, connecting and lighting fuses, and running from the tunnels. The replacement of black powder with dynamite doubled the daily average obtained from blasting. Even so, it took from August 1866 to November 1867 to create the 1,500-foot Summit Tunnel.¹⁰

Blizzards caused avalanches, which often destroyed trestles and killed workers. Snow sheds were built to protect tracks and workers. Thirty-seven miles of snowsheds were built from 1867 to 1869.¹¹

 

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This tent city became Cheyenne, Wyoming. 

Although the UPRR had a chronic shortage of employees early on, this problem was largely solved by Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans, both of whom needed work desperately. After the U. S. government threatened to eliminate the UPRR's funding in 1865 because of the company's lack or progress, UPRR increased its speed, laying two to three miles of track each day. Workers built way stations every 100 miles, giving rise, in many cases to temporary towns providing saloons, dance halls, gambling houses, and brothels in which workers could spend their money on their Saturday nights off. Called a “Hell on Wheels,” such a town often followed the tracks, moving as workers moved.¹² However, a few of these towns became permanent cities, including North Platte, Nebraska, Julesburg, Colorado, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Medicine Bow, Wyoming.¹³

Once the railroad got past the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, the employees' work was easier—relatively easier, that is. But, as we'll see in the next post, the greed and dishonesty of one of the railroad company's top executive officer created other problems.

1The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

2Ibid.

3The Golden Spike: How a Photographer Celebrated the Transcontinental Railroad by Don Nardo.

4Ibid.

5“Bloomer's Cut near Auburn, California.”https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,2632342

6The Transcontinental Railroad by John Perritano

7The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

8The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

9“Donner Pass.” Wikipedia.

10Ibid.

11Ibid.

12Ibid.

13The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

The Transcontinental Railroad: The Greatest American Achievement of the 19th Century!

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Active Member of the Western Writers Association

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In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act, authorizing and funding the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

Two companies would lay the track, surveying routes, constructing trestles and bridges, blasting tunnels through mountains or ledges out of sheer mountainsides, fighting Native Americans who resisted whites' encroachment upon their ancestral lands, and, of course, laying track. The Cheyenne removed sections of track and cut telegraph lines and attacked repairmen.[1] The Sioux and Arapaho joined them in attacking settlers, stealing from them, removing surveyors's stakes, derailing trains, and killing railroad workers.[2]

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Along the way, the companies' workers also strung hundreds of miles of telegraph lines, connecting the western and the eastern halves of the nation both by both rail and wire and making transportation and communication available across the continental United States.

It was a huge enterprise, the biggest of the nineteenth century, and enormously expensive, costing between $96 million and $111.5 million[3] and requiring 10,000 horses and as many workers for the Union Pacific Railroad alone[4], Irish (on the Union Pacific railroad's crews). Chinese made up 80 percent of the Central Pacific Railroad's workers, and Civil War veterans and 1,000 freed African-American slaves worked for both railroads.[5] Whites were paid $35 per month, Chinese $30 per month; Chinese workers were also provided food, including special items that had to be brought by railroad from the east.[6] In Utah, Mormon laborers also helped to build the railroad.[7]

UPRR workers who took their meals aboard the company's supply train ate in a dining car, which sat 125 men per shift. Their tin plates were nailed to the tabletop, and between meals consisting of beef, hard bread, boiled beans, and black coffee, kitchen workers "cleaned" the plates with hand-help "mops."[8]

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Workers had to contend with blizzards, landslides, thunderstorms, mountains, and Native Americans who sought to defend their lands from the iron horse and the settlements of whites the railroad inevitably brought.

The men who built the transcontinental railroad lived under harsh conditions. Quarters aboard the UPRR's supply train were crowded and infested with lice, so many men preferred to sleep in tents.[9] Bathing occurred rarely, and most camps smelled of sweat and worse, as drinking water was contaminated with bacteria that caused diarrhea.[10]

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As much as possible, construction followed a set pattern: surveyors, operating as much as 100 miles in advance of other work crews[11], selected the path and marked it with stakes.

Then, grading crews leveled the pathway, building a raised bed, 12-feet wide (wide enough to accommodate two sets of side-by-side tracks), to lay track on. The graders' bosses leveled the bed with shovels or a heavy scraper haled by horses or oxen. When graders ran into rocks they couldn't move, they used explosives to blast them. Additional crews built bridges or blasted tunnels as needed.[12]

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 Next, a work crew laid ties (six-foot-long, split logs or planks) on the bed. The men then laid 28-foot-long, 500-pound iron rails[13] on the ties, securing them in place by hammering iron spikes through the rails and into the wood. The track layers worked in pairs, five on each side of a rail.[14]

The construction of the transcontinental railroad took about six years. The CPRR broke ground in Omaha, Nebraska, on January 8, 1863, and its railroad joined the UPRR's line at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

There's much more to the story, including the solutions engineers developed for the tremendous problems they encountered due to adverse weather and seemingly insurmountable obstacles that certain terrain features presented. Greed and immorality also caused complications and significant cost overruns. Look for these stories in future posts!

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[1]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[2]The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

[3]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[4]Ibid.

[5]The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

[6]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[7]The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

[8]Ibid.

[9]Ibid.

[10]The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

[11]The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

[12]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[13]The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

[14]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes