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For many years, the town of Pueblo, Colorado, boasted one of the most wide-open tenderloin districts of the West. The townspeople gave tacit if not explicit consent to the thriving business in flesh all the way into the twentieth century, until the bawds left their district to parade downtown on April 18, 1903. The invasion of sinners was described on page one of the Pueblo Star-Journal the next day:
“Shamelessness Runs Riot Without Interference of Police”
Dissolute women raided the sidewalks of Santa Fe Avenue between First and Fourth Streets last evening and accosted passersby without let or hinderance from the police. No less than four complaints were made to the Star-Journal by Santa Fe Avenue businessmen who protested the conditions were such that reputable people were being driven away from the neighborhood. Investigations showed that the complaints were to be well grounded and the state of things prevail such as would not be tolerated in any city where the police department was required by order from the executive, from whom it must come, to enforce even a reasonable degree of decency. Well-known businessmen informed the Star-Journal not only last night, but other nights, they have made specific complaints at police headquarters without result and without securing other reply than a mocking laugh. The Star-Journal does not propose that such things shall continue and it now directs the personal attention of the Mayor to the matter and demands that he compel suppression of the evil.
The girls worked either as individuals or in small groups, perhaps in the house of a madam. Such a house was often lavishly furnished and decorated, and generally conducted business with more select clientele. At the other extreme, in the crib, a girl working on her own plied the same trade in conditions ranging from sparseness to squalor. These cribs would be strung in a line along one street, thus giving the prostitution district the popular name “the line.” It was also known as the red-light district after the red lights posted in the windows all along the line.
Myers Avenue, the line in Cripple Creek, Colorado, was lifted into national prominence after Julian Street, a famed writer of the day, took a horrified look at it and wrote an uncomplimentary article in Collier’s. The town leaders were so incensed they bombarded the magazine’s editors with telegrams. When these left the editors unmoved, the council sent out the following news bulletin: “Tonight the city council of Cripple Creek, Colorado, approved unanimously changing the name of Myers Avenue to Julian Street.” And Julian Street it is still called.
