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An Open Secret: The Story of Deadwood’s Most Notorious Bordellos
The discovery of gold in the southern Black Hills in 1874 set off one of the great gold rushes in America and Deadwood was born. Practically overnight, the tiny gold camp boomed into a town that played by its own rules and attracted outlaws, gamblers, and gunslingers along with the gold seekers.
In the beginning the ratio of men to women was as high as 8 to 1. Hordes of prostitutes and madams came to Deadwood to capitalize on the lack of women. But the mid-1880s, there were more than a hundred brothels in the mining community.
During the 1920s, more than forty years after the town was founded, prostitution was still big business in Deadwood. One of the most popular madams there was a woman of German descent named Pauline Longland. She came to South Dakota in 1910 and opened two bordellos located at 616 and 618 Main Street. When she was arrested for running a disorderly house in August 1920 and paid a sixty-dollar fine for the crime, the court warned her against further offenses. Pauline’s line of work was so lucrative she wasn’t inclined to leave the profession for any reason.
On May 16, 1921, authorities raided her business and she was taken into custody and charged with “keeping a house of ill fame.” Between 1922 and 1930, she was arrested four more times for the same violation and three times for possessing and selling alcohol. In 1929, Pauline was sentence to ninety days in jail on various liquor offenses and ninety days for maintaining a public nuisance.
Her bordellos remained open until her death in February 1931.
To learn more about Deadwood’s most notorious bordellos read An Open Secret
If you’re traveling to Deadwood the week of September 23,
stop by the Brothel Deadwood Museum for a
presentation about the history of the trade in the Black Hills.
