Selling Sex in the Silver Valley
A Business Doing Pleasure
Once the largest silver producer in the world, Wallace became notorious for labor uprisings, hard drinking, gambling and prostitution. As late as 1991, illegal brothels openly flourished because locals believed that sex work prevented rape and bolstered the economy, so long as it was regulated and confined to a particular area of town.
The madams enjoyed unprecedented status as influential businesswomen, community leaders and philanthropists, while elsewhere a growing aversion to the sex trade drove red-light districts underground. Dr. Heather Branstetter’s research features previously unpublished archival materials and oral histories as she relates the intimate details of this unlikely story.
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“This young woman has had quite a career. […] This patient absolutely vows that she does want to change her life. She says she has never been satisfied with it. She doesn’t feel its right to take the money from some of these poor men who have been her customers. She is ashamed of her life. She is ashamed, she says, when she faces other people. She said she would like to go to an LPN school. She likes to take care of the sick.” -– Nevada State Hospital doctor, SSCO Files #913
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“Definitely a screwball.” — Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office file #474 “Do not let Betty return until she understands she is going to have to behave herself.” — SCSO file #546 One of the items on my research to-do list: type up my hand-written research notes. Most of the work I did over the summer already made […]
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So last night I was telling someone I’d just met about the work I did over the summer (I hadn’t seen our mutual friend since I’d gotten back into town and he’d asked about it). I mentioned how I’m interested in looking more at the connection between rhetoric, economics, and how we create our values […]
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— I went to a party last night and ended up having a great conversation that had me thinking about my research from the angle of common law or accepted custom. Used to be, in Idaho, if you lived with someone for ten years you were considered married to that person via “common law.” They have since done away with this convention, but some states still have it in place, I think. — I didn’t know this until last night, but there are other examples of common law or custom being accepted practice–the UDHR, apparently, is one [declaration without teeth]…
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Today, if you take a trip into the mountains of northern Idaho and drop into the geographically isolated valley that once produced more silver than any place on the planet, you will find the town of Wallace. If you linger in this town, which is home to fewer than 1,000 people and subsisting through continued mining operations and tourism, you might find yourself drawn to the ‘Oasis Bordello Museum,†where you can tour one of the town’s historic brothels. This voyeuristic journey into the not-so-distant past will take you up a long narrow staircase, past an old jukebox, down a…