Echos From The Past Haunt Abandoned Deadwood Brothel

Flashlights in hand, we climb the bare wooden stairs and push open the heavy door leading into a dark and gloomy back hall. It's eerily quiet in this narrow corridor that seemingly should resound with loud music and laughter.

But then, even in the best of times, a brothel would be quiet at l0 a.m. on a chilly March morning. Upstairs girls seldom arose before the crack of noon. They needed their beauty sleep after entertaining gentlemen until dawn.

This morning there's an unnatural silence permeating this former Deadwood cathouse that has been untenanted for more than a decade.

Dust lays thick on creaky floors worn down by footsteps of frisky Johns looking for a good time. The back parlor where girls awaited customers has become a storage room for the casino below, stacked high with spare chairs and stools. Unused casino equipment and signs are jumbled in the bay-fronted madam's apartment overlooking historic Main Street.

But the small, dreary "working rooms" are still intact, dominated by beds spread with red velour. "Trick pans" and plastic pitchers, quart containers of merthiolate, hand towels and ribald signs ("Wink if you're in the mood") litter the dresser tops.

Sofas and overstuffed chairs crowd the front parlor reserved for gentlemen-in-waiting. Decor is basic bordello. Paintings of nudes on black velvet set the mood for the entrance of Dixie's girls.

Stand very quietly with closed eyes and you can almost see the line-up as it might have appeared in the late 1970s. Under-dressed in sheer hose and revealing body stockings, the Green Door prostitutes would have paraded through the hall door to artfully pose against the far wall.

Marsha, a black girl from Los Angeles, works in Deadwood during two weeks off from her regular job at Nevada's infamous Mustang Ranch.

Sue, who will never see 40 again, has been one of Dixie's girls for many years and knows all the tricks of the trade.

Monique, back in Deadwood for the winter, comes down from Montana every year when the weather gets too cold to work the streets in Billings.

Brown-eyed April, with her soft southern drawl, is the new girl from Virginia who came to Deadwood hoping to get her big bucks during the busy fall hunting season.

Karen isn't on duty tonight. She's on a required two-week break after working six weeks.

The madam has just unbarred the heavy metal front door to admit the first customers of the night --- a family group. The older man and his middle-aged son from Minnesota have been here before. This year they brought 21-year-old "junior" along. They're introducing him to the finer points of a deer hunting trip to the Black Hills.

The front parlor social amenities --- high priced drinks and flirtatious chit-chat ---precede the evening's business transactions. Two-by-two, couples drift off down dimly lighted halls to discuss financial arrangements in the privacy of the bedrooms. Prices depend upon services requested, beginning with basic dollar-a-minute charges.

Once price is negotiated, the girls collect their wages of sin in advance. They carry the cash down the hall, to the linen room across from the madam's quarters, where a locked dresser has been modified for this particular business. Each girl puts the bills into one of eight slots cut in the dresser top. The take will later be divided 60-40 with the madam. The girls quickly learn not to try "holding out," although they can't quite understand how the madam always seems to know what transpires in the bedrooms.

Before the long night ends, at least 50 or 60 ardent males will have engaged the services of Dixie's girls. April takes care of 28 of them. It's her last night at the Green Door. The petite, dark-haired girl will celebrate her 21st birthday before leaving Deadwood the next day, taking a gift from Dixie with her. Anticipating chilly fall nights, the motherly madam has purchased two warm terry robes for April to wear over skimpy working clothes while waiting the front buzzer announcement of customers in the house.

Three years after April left town, all the illicit cathouses were raided and shut down, bringing an end to a century-old tradition. Bordellos had been an integral part of Deadwood's tourist trappings since 1876 gold rush days.

After the girls faded away, the Green Door had another brief fling. In the late 1980s, a former prostitute returned to conduct tours through the dim and dreary upstairs rooms. Once gambling was legalized in 1989, all bets were called off while Deadwood embarked on frenzied remodeling to accommodate slots and poker tables.

Today the notorious bordello is almost supernaturally quiet, dreary and oppressive. Clinking coins drop in slot machines downstairs, but sounds of gambling activities on historic Main Street are hushed, unable to penetrate thick walls and metal doors.

If those walls could talk, they could tell stories of laughter and tears, triumphs and tragedies, brutality and random acts of kindness. There's a melancholy atmosphere that hangs heavy in these upstairs rooms where temporary love was marketed by the minute.