LAURA EVANS - PROSTITUTE AND PRANKSTER

by Pam North

Laura Evans was secretive about her early life, but she is believed to
have been born in 1874 to a wealthy family in the deep South.  She may
have attended a convent school in Missouri for a time.  She married at
age 17, then left her husband (and possibly a child), heading west to
a new life.  She changed her name, became a prostitute in St. Louis in
her late twenties, and eventually moved on to Denver to work on Market
Street, Denver's famous red-light district.  By the late 1890s she had
left Denver to exploit Leadville's silver boom.  There she worked as a
dance hall girl, a prostitute and even filled in as a clerk for
Augusta Tabor at the Tabor store.

Laura was a dark-eyed beauty in her younger days.  She was outgoing,
fun-loving and high-spirited, living life to the fullest.  A talented
vocalist and dancer, a good conversationalist, and an inveterate card
player, she drank with enthusiasm, rolled her own cigarettes, kept her
money in her stocking, and could equal any miner in her use of
four-letter words.  She was kind, generous, but quite calculating and
serious at times; she also had a keen sense of humor and a fondness
for adventure and horseplay.

When the Ringling Bros.Circus rolled into Leadville, Laura became
entranced with the horse-drawn chariots.  Always ready for an
escapade, she bribed one of the employees to let her borrow a chariot
and two horses.  She raced down Harrison Avenue at breakneck speed,
eventually careening around a corner, hitting a pole in front of the
Vendome Hotel, losing a wheel, turning the chariot on its side, and
spilling herself out of the rig.  Uninjured and triumphant over her
adventure, she showed no remorse when local law enforcement officals
were about to arrest her; a local businessman (one of her customers) 
intervened on her behalf, and she was allowed to leave.

She apparently learned no lesson from that experience; in the winter
of 1896 she drove her horse-drawn sleigh straight into the Ice Palace,
a tourist attraction that had been built at a cost of $200,000.  She
attempted to bring the horse, Broken-Tail Charlie, to a halt inside,
but the animal, startled at the loud music playing, kicked the sleigh,
hurtled into an ore exhibit and broke some ice columns before turning
tail and heading back to his stable.

Laura enjoyed defying the respectable world.  Once, during a visit to
Central City she went to a charity masquerade in a nun's outfit, even
having a photograph made of herself wearing the costume.
 
A strike occurred at Leadville's Maid of Erin Mine.  A heavily-armed
guard of union sympathizers blocked the area, preventing anyone from
going in or out.  The mine owner needed to get the payroll to the workers
who had chosen not to strike, and he asked Laura to smuggle the
payroll through the union lines. Laura agreed.  Securing the payroll
pouch beneath her layers of skirts and mounting a horse sidesaddle,
she rode up Carbonate Hill.  She was well-known to most of the men,
since they had often frequented her house, and her story of wanting to
visit a friend who was still at the mine was believed.  The guards let
her pass and she safely relayed the payroll to the mine superintendent.
The grateful owner invited her to a dinner party at his home,
introducing her as a business associate and discreetly slipping her a
$100 bill as she left.

By the 1890s, Laura had returned to Market Street, running a parlor
house there, becoming a serious rival to Mattie Silks and Jennie
Rogers.  Laura liked to refer to Mattie Silks' house as the "Old
Ladies' Roost," because Mattie Silks' loyalty to her girls resulted in
her keeping them employed there even when they were past their prime.
Laura had her own streak of loyalty; she often secured reputable work
for her girls when they no longer were favored by her clientele.

After the turn of the century, a series of unsolved murders in the
Market Street area was provoking fear and stifling business, and Laura
decided to move to Salida, a small railroad town southwest of Denver.
She ran a properous business there in a house on Front Street, and by
1906 had bought a row of cribs across the way.  The first pay phone
in the state was installed in her establishment.

A severe flu epidemic hit Salida in 1918.  Laura responded to the
crisis by closing her house and cribs and sending her girls to nurse
the sick.  She resumed her business afterward, but Prohibition and the
prevailing moral climate eventually shut her down.  She sold the
cribs, but continued to live in her house, turning it from a brothel
into a rooming house for the railroad men.  She spent her later years
betting in card games (a nightly ritual she enjoyed), and living life
on her terms until her death in April of 1953.