NOVEMBER 2022 Ghost Towns and History of Montana Newsletter From the Montanomal, Nov. 14, 1934 Butte’s Red Light District: A Walking Tour by Ellen Baumler Accessed via: https://montananewspapers.org “I have something to say to you people of Butte which will not sound very nice, but it is the truth just the same. This city of Butte has the reputation of being the lowest sinkhole of vice in the west. I was told that Tacoma was a stench in the nostrils of all good people.... Since coming here I have received a letter from a man in Tacoma who said that if his city was the gateway to hell, then surely I went to hell itself when I came to Butte....What I say is the truth as regards the reputation of Butte for being the widest open town in the wide open west.”— Evangelist William Biederwolf, 1906 “The red-light district of Butte, Montana, consisted of a long street and several side streets containing a hundred cribs, in which young girls were installed ranging in age from sixteen up— for one dollar. Butte boasted of having the prettiest women of any red-light district in the West, and it was true. If one saw a pretty girl smartly dressed, one could rest assured she was from the red-light quarter, doing her shopping. Off duty, they looked neither right nor left and were most respectable.” —Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography “...the ‘girls,’ who range in age from jail bait to battle-ax...sit and tap on the windows. They are ready for business around the clock.”—“The Three Last Wide Open Towns,” Esquire, June 1953 Pleasant Alley and the Copper Block “First came the miners to work in the mine, then came the ladies who lived on the line” sang early-day prospectPhoto by Jolene Ewert-Hintz Upstairs in the Dumas
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