Gone, But Not Forgotten Mining Town Recalls Its Century Of Prostitution

They pulled up front in a wagon labeled “Carriage for Hire.” But this was Wallace 1887, so it’s really the women who were up for rent.

Welcome to ah, um … Bordello Days?

Shelley, Idaho, celebrates its potato heritage and Richland celebrates its contribution to the makings of nuclear war and the people who worked at the now-defunct Hanford bomb plant.

Both are about to be eclipsed by Wallace, which has taken to bragging about its 100 years of prostitution.

Saturday and Sunday were advertised as Idaho Sportsman’s Days. But the traditional black powder demonstrations and chili cook-off were quite a bit spicier with the arrival of Madam Ruby Ridge, Darlin’ Dora, Hallelujah Honey, Unlucky Liz and, of course, cigar-chompin’ Calamity Jane, legendary lover of Wild Bill Hickcock.

Molly B’Damm rode in seconds later on a black Arabian named Desert Darkfire. She teased the miners out of their money with promises to shed her red velvet dress and bathe in the middle of town - if they would shake a little gold dust into the suds.

“I didn’t drive all the way from Murray to sit on tin,” said Molly, played by Spokane-area school counselor Heather Snow. “I’m not gettin’ in until it’s not tin.”

Actors and tourists complied, making the bath trough glitter. Snow unlaced her black boots, tossed them over her shoulders and ducked behind a curtain to disrobe and re-emerge.

With the help of assistants, she discreetly slipped into the suds, occasionally lifted a graceful leg and invited more gold dust. Enough gold would get you the right to scrub her back, Darlin’ Dora joked.

“How much for a gold credit card?” a tourist hollered.

The show soon moved into the Oasis Bordello Museum, where Snow, Mary Olsen (playing Darlin’ Dora), Jean Oton (playing Ruby Ridge) and others brightened the historical re-enactment. Men squirmed and fiddled with their wedding rings when the cast members sidled up to them.

“Just because of the snow on the mountain,” Olsen joked of her hair color, “doesn’t mean the well’s dry.”

Eyes twinkling, she pulled on a lit cigar and instructed reporters not to leave without visiting upstairs.

The playful bordello recreation was the brainchild of Oton and Olsen, Spokane history enthusiasts, who advertise their services as “Ladies with a Past.” They spent much of the past year reading the diaries and letters of real prostitutes, visiting with historians and examining a doctoral dissertation on prostitution from Oregon State University.

Prostitution started in Wallace in 1884 and lasted until 1988, said Michelle Mayfield, curator of the Bordello Museum. At its height, there were at least five houses filled with ladies of the evening, and an untold number of cribs - crude shelters - running down alleys with other prostitutes.

There was a real madam named Ruby Ridge, who worked in Wallace until 1953. The upstairs of the Oasis was leased to madams from 1903 until 1963, when another madam purchased it.

She was still running it in 1988, when a phone call tipped the women to a police raid and they fled for the last time. Prostitution in Wallace was finally killed by “the economy, drugs and AIDS,” Mayfield said.

Although Olsen and Oton had fun with the crowd Sunday, they also reminded visitors of the hardships prostitutes endured in the Old West. Many women were orphaned by the Civil War, small pox, influenza and other epidemics. They were shoved aside by a society that could always find work for a boy but considered a girl little more than another mouth to feed.

Some of those girls counted themselves fortunate to meet someone like Ruby Ridge. They followed the gold to California, Nevada and North Idaho. Some went on to Yukon Territory.

In the 1880s, a prostitute saw 30 to 60 men a night and earned as much as $200. They disinfected themselves with a new product called Lysol and gave 50 percent of the take to the madam. The madam supplied everything from food to fine clothing for that money, and also paid off politicians and police.

Back then, prostitutes were not allowed to stray from the brothel. Abortion was often fatal, so many children were raised in the bordellos. Or infants were drugged and secretly buried, since the children of whores weren’t allowed in cemeteries.

Suicide and murder were the most common ways for ladies to leave the profession. But in their letters and diaries, “what the ladies said was my child didn’t go hungry or without clothes,” Olsen said.

The prostitutes also were legendary for their compassion. Molly B’Damm rallied her women to nurse Murray when its residents were hit with a smallpox epidemic and then died two years later, at age 35, from tuberculosis.

“Historically, the working girls were the nurses … They would even go up into the hills to help sick miners,” Snow said.

“It wasn’t until the proper Christian ladies came into the community that they were pushed out with the whole stigma.”

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