On May 21st, 1980 federal officials raided Deadwood’s infamous brothels, which led to their closure. The brothels had been open since the Gold Rush days when prostitutes first arrived in the mining town with Charlie Utter’s wagon train in 1876.
Legal historian Michael Trump wrote about Deadwood and its illegal and promiscuous activities in the book, Raiding Deadwood’s Badlands: Its Illegal History of Prostitution and Gambling. He joined SDPB in 2015 and discussed why Deadwood's brothels stayed open for a century.
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Karl Gehrke:
The history of prostitution in Deadwood dates back to the Gold Rush. Why were the brothels in Deadwood allowed to stay open for so long, for nearly a century?
Michael Trump:
That's the question that I tried to answer with this book because it was the question that intrigued me. I can recall visiting Deadwood for the first time, I think in 1987, and I passed one of the buildings that used to house these brothels and there was a plaque that indicated that this particular building had housed a brothel until 1980. And I thought to myself, that has to be a mistake. They must have meant 1880. But as I investigated, I discovered it was 1980, and it became an intriguing question to me. One of the reasons that I think that prostitution persisted there was the industry became intertwined with the Deadwood economy. The Deadwood was built as a mining town, the Homestake Gold Mine developed. And I think that with that development, there were a lot of single men coming into the area, and they had the means if they were successful miners or they just wanted to come to town to relax after a hard day of mining, Deadwood became the place to go.
And I think another factor that played into the longevity of prostitution in Deadwood was the fact that the people that came to Deadwood originally, they had been at other mining camps and they had developed the trade, and Deadwood was one of the last great gold rushes so that the people that came to Deadwood were very experienced with what they did and they were good at it. And I think those two factors were just a couple of many factors that allowed prostitution to persist, not only into the 20th century, but well into the 20th century, all the way up until 1980, which again is just astounding to most people. I think that there were concerns even in 1904, I have in my book just verbatim a letter to the editor from a gentleman that had indicated that other towns that had had the gold rush and the prostitution and brothel business were growing up and they were developing law and order, and they were getting rid of these kinds of industries, and it wasn't happening in Deadwood.
And he was expressing concern for why that was, and we needed to do something about it. So Deadwood was certainly aware that it had not only the prostitution and the brothels, but also gambling, which persisted in Deadwood, even though it was illegal, well into the 1940s. So again, I think the simple answers are that it was just became intertwined with the economy, the people that came there were exceptional at what they did, and when it becomes entwined with the economy, it becomes more difficult to get rid of it. It was always a concern that if the brothels went away, the town would lose quite a bit of its established economy.
Karl Gehrke:
Did law enforcement essentially, just in regards to prostitution, look the other way?
Michael Trump:
From what I can gather from my research, I think that's what happened. I think some time in the, maybe the 1930s, '40s, there was kind of an unwritten code that developed. Law enforcement would go up there almost to police the Johns that would attend, that they're go to the brothels if they became a problem. So I think that there was an understanding that the brothels would be allowed to persist as long as they followed a certain set of rules. One piece of evidence I found was that for some time it was known as the place to go after the bars closed in town, you could go up to the houses and get a drink. Well, and I'm sorry, that was happening before the bars closed. So the bar owners were a little upset at that it was taking away from their business.
So I think a deal that was struck was that they could go up there and serve drinks after the bars closed, so they weren't taking away from that. And I think that was somewhat regulated with law enforcement. There might be fines if they were caught serving drinks during bar hours. So there was a cooperation among the town, and that would've included law enforcement, that realizing that business was good for everyone, and as long as everybody got their share of the business, I think it was something that was just kind of looked away with law enforcement.
Karl Gehrke:
So then what finally led to the 1980 raid that closed the brothels?
Michael Trump:
It's a long and interesting story, but I think the short story of it there was the Federal Government became interested in the houses and the thing that triggered that event, there was a murder of a federal judge down in the state of Texas. And it's my understanding, it was believed that either the murder weapon, that this rifle, or some information about the murder had passed through the houses. So the Federal Government to the FBI had targeted the brothels and were investigating the brothels covertly from 1978 on into 1980 until the raid took place and they had developed enough information that they thought they might, if they raided the place, obtain the evidence that they needed. So that
precipitated the raid. State and local officials were involved in it, but the raid was really conducted so covertly that many people didn't even know it was going to happen, including the local state's attorney wasn't aware that it was going to happen.
So when the Federal Government came in, they really had a specific target. Their target was not to shut down the houses. They wanted to gather the information they were looking for if it existed, and then they were done. When they made the raid, they locked all the houses down. They took, I think, some 1680 or 16 of ladies that were working at the time, and they led them right down here to Rapid City where they put them in front of a grand jury for their testimony and then they let them go. It wasn't until the state moved a week later that there was any action to permanently shut down the houses.
Karl Gehrke:
What was the reaction to the townspeople to this raid in 1980, especially given what you said that prostitution was closely entwined with the city's economy?
Michael Trump:
Well, it caused quite a bit of upset in the town, as you can imagine. Many of the people that supported the houses, again, had businesses or part of their income was derived from the houses. So they did a number of interesting things, not after the Federal Government came in, but after the state came in the week later to file a temporary and then later a permanent injunction from their houses being able to operate. A couple of fun things that happened were that they just impromptu started a parade down Deadwood's Main Street one night in the summer, and they were all sorts of people involved in this parade, and it was just a reaction spontaneously to try to do anything they could to help save the brothels. They had signs to that effect, and it made not only a local appearance in the newspaper, but it became such a story, I think it appeared in Time Magazine.
They also had conducted kind of an informal poll, and it came out in the newspapers that a majority of the people were in favor of keeping the brothels. The lady that was working in the houses, Pam Holliday, had Pam's Purple Door. She also, once the state moved to close the houses, created somewhat of a campaign herself. She appeared on shows like the Phil Donahue Show and the show with Tom Snyder. Her goal in doing that was to create a national buzz and hopefully in some way, I guess, help get the state to back off and not continue to try to move the houses to close.
Her actions appeared also in National Magazine, Time Magazine. She also held, this was an interesting event during that summer, she held an auction of all her goods, and she did that. I think, around a thousand people showed up for that auction to participate. And again, probably all the while meant as a campaign to try to have the state change their mind and stop the move on the houses. None of this worked, of course, and the state persisted through legal channels and in October of 1980, then the houses by court order were permanently closed.
Karl Gehrke:
There were earlier raids in the 1950s, but then the brothels reopened. Why did they finally get shut down in 1980? Was it just a different environment?
Michael Trump:
Yeah. When I talk about the earlier raids in the book, I refer to them as the local raid of 1952, the state-led raid of 1959, and then the federal raid of 1980. I think what happened, what you see in the 1950s were local mandate that people, again, it was evident that they wanted these houses to persist because they were seen as good for the economy. In 1952, the local state's attorney raided the houses and the raid led to a jury trial of one of the madams. The trial lasted for a day. Everybody in town knew that these places were operating as houses of prostitution, and yet the jury, a local jury, took only 10 minutes to acquit the lady of operating the houses. So I think the state's attorney in that instance saw that, again, as the people have spoken more or less and they want these houses open. He never moved on the houses again, even though they quickly reopened after that trial.
In 1959, another state's attorney came to town. He was from outside the area, was offended by their presence and made a move on them. That case went all the way to the South Dakota Supreme Court. He took a different tack. He didn't have charged them criminally, but he filed an injunction. It was a civil matter. That case, there were errors made in the civil procedure of closing the houses down and the South Dakota Supreme Court actually ended up overturning the circuit judge, and with that overturning his decision on a certain civil procedure, the houses were again allowed to reopen. And the interesting thing that happened there, in 1959, was that the process took so long that by the time the Supreme Court's decision came down, there had been another election and this state's attorney was voted out of office, again, presumably because he had had the audacity to move against the houses and the people wanted them. So the guy that replaced the state's attorney had always been seen more favorable toward the houses.
So in 1980, I think again, to answer why it took until then, I think the Federal Government came in and they were so thorough with their raid, it gave the state the opportunity, I think conditions were ripe to finally close them. The State Attorney General filed an injunction after the Federal Government came in, and there were other conditions. In 1979, the Argus Leader had published a whole series of newspaper articles talking about the Deadwood brothels and why are they still open? Prostitution's illegal. There had been a murder in 1978, a local murder that there was a supposed tie to the houses. So I think by 1980, conditions had gotten rough enough in town that I think there was enough support generated for finally closing them down.
Karl Gehrke:
Michael, you were talking about how closely prostitution was entwined with the local Deadwood economy. Did the shutdown of the brothels, did that affect the city's economy?
Michael Trump:
I think the general consensus is that it did. There was great concern after the brothels were shut down in October of 1980, to the extent that the community held a forum in November of that same year. And what I find fascinating about Deadwood is its resilience and its creativity in keeping its industry vice and its reputation alive. In that meeting in November, Pam Holliday, the madam, appeared and the state's attorney was there as well, and there was discussion about if the people of the town want prostitution so bad, you could make, create a constitutional change so that it would be allowed in Deadwood.
Now, that idea never caught hold, but that idea in terms of gambling, did. I have to believe there were members of Deadwood, you bet, who were ultimately successful in having Deadwood gain legalized gaming. I have to believe there was somebody there at that meeting who sparked an idea that maybe we could get gambling changed in the state of South Dakota to be allowed in Deadwood, and it would require a constitutional change that was discussed at that meeting. So Deadwood's reaction to the brothels closing, while it hurt their economy for some time, I think a new idea was created. And of course, the story with legalized gaming in Deadwood is a story all on its own. It was legalized in 1989. So again, the town has looked to its past and created a wonderful industry for the town.
Karl Gehrke:
Well, Michael, I'm going to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with SDPB.
Michael Trump:
Yeah, well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.