History likes to be tidy. It wants the women of the 19th-century American frontier to fit into two neat little boxes: the stoic, sun-bonneted pioneer mother baking bread in a sod house or the glamorous, tragic "fallen woman" with a heart of gold. But real life in a Nevada mining camp or a dusty Montana cattle town wasn't a movie set. It was messy. It was loud. And for the good time girls, it was a calculated, often brutal business decision.
They weren't just background characters in the story of the Wild West.
Honestly, the term "good time girls" itself is a bit of a polite 19th-century euphemism, much like "soiled doves" or "ladies of the night." It covers a massive spectrum of women, from the high-earning parlor house madams who basically owned half the town to the desperate "crib girls" working for pennies in the shadows. To understand the American West, you have to look at why these women were there in the first place. It wasn't always about "ruin" or a lack of morals. Usually, it was about the math.
Why the Good Time Girls Headed West
The West was a man's world, at least statistically. In 1850s California, men outnumbered women roughly twelve to one. In some mining camps, that ratio was even crazier. Where there is a massive gender imbalance and a lot of lonely men with pockets full of gold dust or silver, there is an economic vacuum.
Most women of the era had exactly three career paths: get married and hope he isn't a drunk, work sixteen hours a day as a laundress until your fingers bleed, or become a good time girl.
The pay was the clincher. A domestic servant in 1870 might make $2 a week plus room and board. A popular woman in a high-end brothel in Virginia City or Cheyenne could pull in $30 to $50 in a single night. You’ve got to remember that for a woman who had been abandoned by a husband or who was trying to escape a dead-end factory job back East, the West represented a terrifying kind of freedom.
The Hierarchy of the "Trade"
It wasn't a monolith. Not even close.
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At the top were the madams. Think of women like Mattie Silks or Elizabeth "Libby" Thompson. These weren't just "madams"; they were entrepreneurs. Mattie Silks famously boasted she never had a "bad" house and was one of the wealthiest women in Denver. They owned real estate. They paid taxes—or at least the "fines" that acted as taxes. They were often the only people in town with enough liquid cash to lend money to the local bank when things got tight.
Then you had the girls in the middle-tier brothels and the "hurdy-gurdy" dancers. They were paid to dance, but the real money came from the commission on the drinks they convinced the men to buy.
The bottom was grim. The "cribs" were essentially one-room shacks where women lived and worked in squalor. Life expectancy there was short, marked by disease, violence, and the heavy use of laudanum or morphine to numb the reality of it all. It’s important to acknowledge that while some women "succeeded," many more were just trying to survive Tuesday.
The Good Time Girls as Unlikely Community Builders
Here is the weird part that people forget: the good time girls were often the first ones to step up during a crisis.
When a smallpox epidemic hit a mining camp or a mine collapsed, the "respectable" society often shrank back. But there are dozens of recorded instances where these women acted as nurses, donated their earnings to build the town's first school, or paid for the funerals of indigent miners.
Take Julia Bulette in Virginia City. She was so beloved for her charity work and her support of the local fire department that when she was murdered in 1867, the town held a massive funeral procession with thousands of people. Even the Governor attended. She was a business owner, a friend to the working man, and—yes—a prostitute. The town didn't see a contradiction there until much later when "civilization" (and the wives of the wealthy) finally caught up.
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The Legal Shell Game
How did they stay in business in "moral" towns? It was basically a subscription service for the law.
Local governments would "arrest" the good time girls and the madams once a month. They’d show up at court, pay a standard fine of $5 or $10, and walk right back out. It was essentially a licensing fee. This money often funded the entire local police force or paved the streets.
In places like Dodge City or Tombstone, the presence of these women was an accepted part of the ecosystem. The town fathers knew that if they shut down the red-light district, the miners and cowboys would just take their gold to the next town over. Economic survival trumped Victorian morality every single time.
The Myth of the "Golden Heart" vs. Reality
We love the story of the girl who saves the cowboy and they ride off into the sunset. It happened, sure. But more often, the story ended with a quiet exit.
The goal for many good time girls was "respectability" elsewhere. They would save their money, move two towns over where nobody knew them, and open a hat shop or a boarding house. They’d change their names and invent a dead husband.
Some historians estimate that a significant chunk of the "pioneer grandmothers" in the West had a few years on their resumes that they never talked about at Sunday dinner.
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Violence was a constant shadow. Without the protection of a powerful madam, a woman was at the mercy of her clients. Alcoholism was rampant. Suicide rates were heartbreakingly high. In 1870, the "glamour" was mostly just cheap perfume covering the scent of coal smoke and sweat.
Famous Names You Should Actually Know
- Pearl de Vere: The "Queen of the Old West" in Cripple Creek, Colorado. She ran the Old Homestead, the most luxurious brothel in the area. She charged $100 a night—a fortune at the time. When she died of a morphine overdose, she was buried in a lavish ceremony, despite the "polite" society’s protests.
- Nellie Cashman: While she wasn't a "good time girl" in the sexual sense, she spent her life in the same camps and was known as the "Angel of the Cassiar." She ran boarding houses and restaurants, often being the only woman in camp. She proves that the line between "businesswoman" and "camp follower" was often blurred.
- Belinda Mulrooney: She made her fortune in the Klondike. She started by selling silk underwear and hot water to miners and ended up owning hotels. She understood that in the West, luxury was the most expensive commodity.
What Really Happened to the Good Time Girls?
The end didn't come because people suddenly became more moral. It came because of the railroad and the middle class.
As the "Wild" West became the "Settled" West, the demographic shifted. Wives and children arrived. Schools were built. Churches became the center of social life. The informal "fine" system was replaced by actual prohibition and the Red Light Abatement Acts of the early 1910s.
The profession didn't vanish—it just went underground. The visible, tax-paying, community-funding madam became a relic of a frontier that was being paved over.
Practical Insights for History Buffs
If you're researching this or planning a trip to historic Western towns, here is how to find the real story:
- Check the Census Records: Look for women listed as "Seamstress" or "Boarding House Keeper" living in groups of 5 or 10. In the late 1800s, this was a common code used by census takers for women working in brothels.
- Visit the "Museums" with Caution: Many "Old West" museums romanticize the good time girls. Look for the small, local historical societies in places like Butte, Montana or Silver City, New Mexico. They often have the court ledgers that show the actual fines paid and the names of the women.
- Read the Primary Sources: Books like The Gilded Cage by Anne Seagraves or Soiled Doves by Anne Seagraves offer a much grittier, documented look at these lives than any Hollywood movie.
- Look at the Architecture: In many old mining towns, you can still see the physical hierarchy. The fancy brick houses on the hill were the "respectable" elite; the smaller houses near the creek or the railroad tracks were the red-light district.
The good time girls weren't just "prostitutes." They were a vital, if often exploited, part of the American expansion. They provided the capital that built towns, the nursing that saved lives, and the tax base that funded the law. To ignore them is to ignore the actual mechanics of how the West was won.
It wasn't just won with six-shooters and plows. It was won with grit, gold, and the women who knew exactly how to separate one from the other.
Next Steps for Further Exploration:
- Visit Virginia City, Nevada: Walk through the Silver Queen and see the artifacts from Julia Bulette’s era. It gives a visceral sense of the scale of the mining operations and the women who serviced them.
- Research the "Red Light Abatement Act": Specifically, look at how it was applied in California in 1913. This was the legal turning point that ended the era of the open "good time" districts.
- Analyze 1880 Census Data: Use sites like Ancestry or FamilySearch to look at the "occupations" column in mining towns like Leadville, Colorado. You’ll see the "seamstress" pattern mentioned above in real-time.