Source for the image above: Grover, Montie E., Mrs. Scrapbook (1881): Toppen Library, Special Collections, Uncat. Laramie, Wyoming.

In his column “In Old Wyoming,” John C. Thompson describes two notorious ‘hog ranch’ madams who operated brothel establishments in the forests and plains areas outside Laramie City: Mother Featherlegs and Strawberry Kate. Strawberry Kate would wear only opulent furs and on occasion disrobe, while Madam Featherlegs was “messily murdered”: “She had made a specialty of harboring road agents who preyed on the Deadwood stages and presumption was that some of these, reasoning that she had come to know too much, liquidated her.” Regardless, a highway marker off the Old Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage Road, in the form of a grave honoring Madam Featherlegs, appears to implicitly recognize her contribution to the development of Wyoming’s modern infrastructure. The site is the only known memorial dedicated to a sex worker in the United States.

Another woman known as Calamity Jane, as Thompson puts it, “had some sterling qualities, including unflinching courage in any situation, boundless generosity, a capability in self-sacrifice that shamed her betters.” However, her reputation for being what a familiar called a “prostitute of low degree” reflected her placement low on the hierarchy. This hierarchy ranged from posh parlors like the House of Mirrors in Cheyenne, Wyoming all the way down to the crib women hunting for customers in the alleys near railroad tracks in Laramie. Comparatively, women who hunted for customers alone near man camps outside the city were in their own class entirely.

To this point, Thompson includes the story of Lou Polk in his column. Unfortunately, her story typifies the rough life of a bedroll prostitute in pursuit of customers far away from the protection of a bordello (Spanish for brothel). In what Thompson calls one of the “not nice incidents,” her nose was cut off by gamblers and she was left there, though she lived.

The “prostitute with a heart of gold” narrative is easy to slip into. However, I wish to move beyond it due to its inaccuracies and flattening, deadening effects. Through my research, the notion that nineteenth-century prostitutes were nuanced human beings like everyone else became clear. They were of course human, with human desires for companionship, respect, success, and recognition.

Aside from Monte Grover’s scrapbook, nothing in my archival research exemplifies this fact more than one segment from Thompson’s column to the right:

In the rough-and-ready phase of the planting of white man’s civilization in the west, courtezans often exercised a notable influence—and it wasn’t a bad influence on many occasions. Members of the sisterhood of “the line” sometimes had a potent voice in civic affairs. Their opinions were heard with respectful attention and not dismissed merely because of the source. It is not improbable that of occasion such opinions were the most sensible advanced.

Source for the anecdotes above and the images on the left: Thompson, C. Jason. “In Old Wyoming.” From the Grace Logan Schaedel Papers, Collection #54, Box 4. American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. Laramie, Wyoming.