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When word got out that a few
lone prospectors were digging for gold in the
El Paso & Rand
Mountains
of the Western Mojave area of
California
, more men followed. They
came on foot, burro, mule, or wagon, hoping to strike it rich and go on
to bigger and better things in life.
They spent their days dry washing, digging and blasting, and if
they were lucky they were rewarded with a few nuggets of the precious
yellow metal. They lived in
dugouts in the canyon walls, or built cabins with rock foundations and
canvas tops that barely protected them from the extreme desert
conditions that could dip below freezing in the winter, and above the
century mark in the summer. The
wind always seemed to howl, blowing dust on their person and everything
surrounding them. The rain,
though seldom, came with a vengeance when it did arrive, turning dry
narrow gullies and canyons into raging rivers, washing away anything
that stood in it’s path.
If the prospecting was good, and rich strikes were discovered in
the multicolored hills around them, more prospectors followed and more
substantial settlements began growing around the lonely dugouts and
cabins. Supplies would be
brought in, and stores would be set up.
More often than not the first establishment to set up shop would
be the primitive saloons consisting of a wood shack or lean-to with a
bar inside made of two whiskey barrels and a wooden plank.
The saloons wet the miners parched throats, and helped them to
forget their families in civilized towns far away, but the more they
drank they still found they were thirsty for female companionship.
The “ladies” would be the first to come in to quench that
thirst until the camps grew into real towns, and more respectable women
arrived.
Mexican
Nell Comes To Goler Camp
In 1893 a curvaceous dark-eyed woman came down the mountains of
Tehachapi across the desert to the
Black
Mountain
diggings in the
El Paso
’s. She came on a
freight wagon with food
and mining supplies, and her latest lover.
“Mexican Nell”, was her name, and she was described as
having “temperaments as volcanic as the peak the camp was named
after.” Word
was that the camp in Goler Gulch was the place to be, so Nell said
good bye to her partner in
Black
Mountain
, and secured her belongings to the back of a burro she had gotten
from a miner. She wound
her way up and down the sandy trails to the new camp, hailing the boys
as she rode in. She was ready and “willing to relieve the camp of
its tedium and the boys of their dust.”
Though there were many saloons, Nell, and the girls that
eventually followed her to Goler, preferred Nugent’s where they
could listen to the sound of the fiddle, guitar and accordion, and
join the old time miners as they sang favorite old camp songs.
As the evenings would wear on and the voices became weary from
singing, the lonely miner could trade in gold dust or nuggets for one
of Nell’s girls and go back to a tiny room or crib for a few hours
of “companionship.”
Charlie
Koehn’s Bartender
Charlie Koehn brought mining machinery to Mojave for a gold
mill, then moved to Kane springs and developed a waystation.
Supplies were freighted in, and the first mail deliveries began
at a cost of 25 cents an item. His
post office was in operation until 1896, when
a post office opened in Garlock.
Koehn also had a bar in Goler.
His handsome mustached bartender was courted by one of the
ladies of the evening. Every night she brought him a home cooked meal,
keeping him fat and happy. As
more girls and more tents moved in to town, the bartender began having
midnight
suppers cooked by one of the new girls.
Eventually, the two cooks discovered each other and the
bartender had to go back to cooking his own meals.
Garlock
Boom
Town
Not too far from Goler, the camp of Garlock, formerly known as
Cow Wells, or
El Paso
City
, was booming. Eugene
Garlock, whom the town was named after, could not process the ore fast
enough. The Kelly, Smith,
Henry, McKenna and
Visalia
mills were built to help ease the load,
and several smaller mills sprouted up all over the area.
More miners and families began moving in, and more businesses
were being built to provide services for them.
Jim McGinnis’ new store was the third to open with much
needed supplies. Dr. W. H.
Wright began doctoring people and providing medicines from his office
and drug store. A.
J. Doty built a two story hotel on the main street.
Wells Fargo agent, Ed Maginnis, kept busier than ever shipping
gold .
In 1896, a man named John Miller built
a rock building across
from the stage stop at A. J. Doty’s Hotel.
At first glance the pretentious building appeared to be a bank,
but the inside housed a bar, gambling room, and rooms for his girls.
Miners visited John in his back office to sell the gold they
had found, then spent their earnings gambling, drinking, and visiting
the girls on their way out.
One
Time At Rand Camp
In the hills east of Goler and Garlock, the tiny camp of Rand,
built near the Yellow Aster mine discovered by Burcham, Mooers, and
Singleton, showed even greater promise.
As the ore was pulled out of the mines the town of
Randsburg
grew up around the original tent camp.
The Gordon brothers ran a livery stable on the corner opposite
the present day Randsburg Post Office.
The Wells Fargo Stage stop was conveniently located next to the
stable, a vacant lot and Big Ella’s.
The stable could tend to the tired horses, and Big Ella’s six
to eight girls could tend to the weary
male travelers.
The early Randsburg red light district grew up in the haphazard
town, with “the fluzy barn” right in the heart of the business
district.
A transient came to Randsburg in
December of 1901 and went to the dentist to have a tooth removed.
Unfortunately, all too late, the dentist realized that the man
also had smallpox. After
the Christmas holiday, more than 200 people were infected.
A huge tent , dubbed the “Pest House”, was set up to
quarantine many of the sick. Some
of the first that were sent there were the ladies from the red light
district. Although they
were quarantined, the ladies still managed to have visits from the
town’s men. When the
doctor found out about it, he hired a couple of respectable family
men to stand guard with shotguns at the entrances, and the
visits stopped. Meantime,
those who were not ravaged by the smallpox, or were immune from it,
took care of those who were sick.
Even the healthy red light ladies pitched in and did their
share of nursing. Many a
respectable Randsburg woman, sick with the smallpox, found herself
being taken care of by the women they had once scorned.
One day during the smallpox epidemic, Doctor MacDonald was
called to Madam Fay’s parlor. There
she was lying in bed in a darkened room, complaining of a headache,
the light bothering her eyes, and her face was red and swollen.
She told the doctor that she had put croton oil on her face by
accident and needed something for the itching and burning it had
caused. Of course he
happily obliged her by doing so. Weeks
later, Madam Fay ran in to the doctor on the street
and laughed over how
she had pulled a good one over on him.
Turns out that the madam had actually had the smallpox, and
wanted relief from the symptoms she had from it, but did not want to
be sent to the Pest House. Her
scheme had worked.
Fre
nch Marguerite
Marguerite Roberts aka “French Marguerite”, ran a popular
parlor house in Randsburg in the early 1900’s.
She was constantly having charges brought against her and was
condemned often by the local
newspaper:
“That the said Marguerite keeps and runs a dance hall in the
very center of the business section of our town; that it is so
situated that ourselves and our children are compelled to pass and
repass this abominable brothel every time we go to the post office,
the drugstore, the meat market, and the Wells Fargo Company office.
Second, that we are continually being insulted by the inmates
of this brothel, who are common prostitutes.
Therefore, we ask in the name of high heaven and common decency
that your honorable body will revoke the saloon license of said
Marguerite, and that the other place be licensed to run on the
principal streets of our town”.
“Conditions are fast ripening in that section for a
repetition of the big fire last June.
The business men who own the adjoining buildings, not having
recovered from the losses occasioned by the last fire are not in a
position to erect adobes. A
fire is liable to start during a drunken orgy any night, and once
started would quickly wipe out the whole lower half of town,
businesses, homes, rooming houses, hotel, and on these windy nights it
is hard to tell where it would stop.
Under the law our officers have the power to enter all places
of unsavory reputation frequented by women and arrest and punish as
vagrants everyone found therein.”
In her book Desert Bonanza, Marcia
Rittenhouse Wynne tells the story of her grandfather’s run in
with Marguerite. Unhappy
with charges Judge Wynne had brought against her, Marguerite grabbed a
nearby bottle of ink and threw towards his head.
As the judge ducked
to avoid being hit by the bottle, the ink hit the wall behind him and
splattered all over him. Like
many prostitutes, French Marguerite had a temper to watch out for.
Hot
Time in
Red
Mountain
The 1920’s came in with a roar, and the place to be was a
little town southeast of Randsburg and
Johannesburg
. Silver was being
pulled out of the Kelly Mine in large amounts and the town of
Red
Mountain, originally known as Osdick after one of the miners, was
born. During a time when
alcohol was prohibited and prostitution was frowned upon throughout
most of the
United States
,
Red
Mountain
became the place to go for both. Los
Angelenos would drive 150 miles to enjoy the ever popular Saturday
nights in the desert. At
least 30 saloons ran wide open, hotels had full bars, gambling and
rooms with girls. The post
office was apparently the only place in town one could not buy a
drink.
The Annex, Little Eva’s, The Monkey House, The Northern, The
Owl, The Pacific, The Red Onion and the Silver Dollar were just a few
of the popular spots in Red Mountain.
The girls that worked there were considered good looking, clean
and good company. Those
that weren’t didn’t stay around long.
Most were known by one name, that was easy for the boys to
remember. There was
“Lois” who was stocky but noted for being a neat dresser, and
tall red-headed “Kathy”.
“Jerry” at the Silver Dollar was short and dark, and
considered quite beautiful. “
Tex
”, at the Owl, charmed the men with large expressive hazel eyes, and
her heavy
Texas
accent. “Carmen”,
a chunky girl, was dark and good looking.
“Latin Rita”, was petite and
emotionally charming.
Quite a few of the girls went by the name of
“Rose”, but one in particular stood out not only for her
beauty, but the fact that the boys liked her in spite of her habit of
stealing their wallets. And
there were the two Indian girls, “Indian May”, and “Cokie
Joe”. “Cokie Joe” earned her name from her favorite drink, coke
and gin.
Many brothels offered more than just booze and women.
Little Eva’s was famous for its reading library next to
it’s bar. Irene’s was
noted for being the friendliest, but
was not as popular as the other places.
The place run by “Sugar Pie”, had the most disciplined
girls, but she herself was considered good company.
The men enjoyed talking to her, and apparently she was a good
dancer.
The buxom madam known as “Red Mountain Hattie” had a
reputation for treating her girls as if they were her daughters.
She was very choosey who she allowed to come visit them.
She also enjoyed drinking with the men and getting acquainted
with them herself, before she decided if the gentleman was an
appropriate customer for her house.
Poor Hattie, turned her Ford over near
Lancaster
one day while returning from
Los Angeles
. Drinking was the
cause of her accident, more than likely.
She had very little cash on her when she got to the Picker
Brothers Garage asking them to repair her vehicle,
and they weren’t the type of place to favor credit.
Hattie quickly put up her massive diamond ring for security and
identified herself as one of the
Red
Mountain
girls. The mechanics
immediately began doing the repair work she needed done.
One
Red
Mountain
bartender remembered most of the working girls of
Red
Mountain
as brunettes, with only a few redheads, and no blondes.
They never stayed long and were always on the move, looking for
better money and better living conditions.
Some did stay on, married and made good wives.
For the most part they stayed to themselves, and away from the
decent women of the community.
A wife in Randsburg even noted “They were a high class girl
for the type they were.”
Life
is not a bed of Roses
Life as a prostitute, of course, was not all rosy and grand,
even in
Red
Mountain
, where the law looked the other way.
Shootings and brawls often broke out.
One girl, who went by the name “Arkansaw”, enjoyed many of
the older miners as her regulars, but was jealous of a particular
miner who came in and treated all the girls, and did not dote
specifically on her. The
man went to
Los Angeles
for a few days, then came back to have “Arkansaw” give him a hard
time for drinking and not treating her to one.
His reply was “I
don’t have to treat you whores any longer; I’ve got my own woman
now.” A stranger
got after him for his slander, and demanded an apology from
him. Of course he offered
none, and was shot.
In Randsburg, an innocent girl came to town answering an ad for
a honkytonk. It didn’t
take her long to realize that the job she had applied for was not what
she had been expecting. She
stayed behind locked doors, refusing to open them for anyone.
Some of the miners realized the mistake she had made, and sent
for her brother, who came in to town making discreet inquiries, hoping
not to create a commotion. He
posed as a customer and asked to be shown the new girl.
When the girl realized it was her brother, she let him in and
they began figuring out how she could escape. Unfortunately, the house
madam figured out what was going on,
and sent a bouncer named “Big Mitch” to her room.
The bouncer and the madam hollered outside the door,
threatening to break the door down and kill both the girl and her
brother if they didn’t let them in.
The door began to splinter as they pounded on it creating an
opening. The brother
drew his gun, and fired at
“Big Mitch”, then grabbed his sister and they ran away.
It was said that when “Big Mitch’s” bouncing days were
over, and he cashed in his last chips, no one but the madam cared. She
insisted her employee’s killer be put to trial.
Judge Wynne was hired as the defense lawyer in the case,
self-defense was pled, and the young girl’s brother was acquitted of
the charges. The madam was
enraged, and vowed to kill Judge Wynne.
Little remains in Garlock today, and even less in Goler.
A drive through Red Mountain and Randsburg and you will see the
places like The Owl, The Silver Dollar, The White
House, and the Joint are
still open for a drink or a bite to eat, as well as lively
conversation with prospectors old and new but the red light ladies are
long gone. Visit these
towns on a quiet week day when the tourists and ohv’ers are not
crowding the streets and you may faintly hear the girls and the
miners, the strains of music
laughter, singing and perhaps the sounds of a brawl and gunshots, as
the gusty winds whistle through the lonely desert streets.
Bibliography
Desert Bonanza
by
Marcia Rittenhouse
Wynn
The Arthur H. Clark
Company
Glendale,
California
Out of Print
Gold Gamble
by
Roberta Martin
Starry
Engler Publishing
George N. Engler
& Associates
Now available
through www.amazon.com
Special thanks to
Daphne Worsham, Robin Flinchum, and David A. Wright for helping with
research and inspiring me. Thanks
to Marty, for the pictures of downtown Randsburg!
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