Entertaining the 'Boys in Blue'
by Rena Webb

"Places of the vilest character," was General Alfred Terry's description of the saloons and bawdy houses that sprang to life in Sturgis in the late l870s to serve soldiers assigned to duty at the nearby military post.

In the summer of l878, troops charged with giving protection to the Black Hills set up camp two miles west of Bear Butte, the towering landmark on three major trails leading to Northern Hills mining camps.

The girls of the gulch were quick to capitalize on a new opportunity. Taking note of military payday, they traveled down the canyon to entertain the soldiers, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by the Deadwood newspaper.

On Monday, July 22, 1878, the Daily Times reported:

The soldiers at the Bear Butte camp are having a big time. They were paid off Saturday and are now trying to see how quick they can get away with their money. The "girls and the gang" of this city are nearly all there and are reaping a rich harvest. Drunken soldiers with their "earth born turbulence all forgot" are, it is said, laying around all over the prairies and in the woods between Crook and their camp thick as hair on a dog's back. In the language of our informant, "they are having lots of fun," and we reckon, are paying for it dearly.

By Wednesday '"the girls and the gang" headed back to Deadwood, having succeeded in "picking up about all the money which was disbursed to the soldiers by Paymaster Smith.

The 'boys in blue' will now have the opportunity to take a rest until next payday," the newspaper predicted.

Even the notorious Martha Jane Canary got in on the act. On September 24, l878, the Daily Times observed: "Calamity Jane was a passenger on the outgoing Bismarck coach last evening. Her destination is not known by this reporter, but she probably went down to see the 'boys in blue'."

By the following winter, a permanent post named Fort Meade was established as regimental headquarters of the Seventh Cavalry. It gave birth to a settlement one mile west of the post, named Sturgis City for the Seventh Cavalry's first post commander, Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis, an investor in the townsite company.

While Deadwood's earliest newspapers seemed to take perverse pleasure in gossiping about the escapades of the demi-monde, the first Sturgis publication, founded in l883, was more circumspect.

The Weekly Record had little to say about saloons, bawdy houses or prostitutes, making brief references to such illicit activities only as a necessary part of stories about murders, robberies and other misdeeds.

Abe Hill's "dance house" was heavily patronized by black troopers of the 25th Infantry who arrived at Fort Meade in April of 1880, and figured prominently in the l885 murder of Dr. H. P. Lynch.

The Weekly Record devoted several columns of newsprint to the shooting of Dr. Lynch who was "sitting in his drug store reading a newspaper" when he was killed by Ross Hallon, a corporal of Company A.

According to the newspaper, Hallon had quarreled with "his paramour, one Minnie Lewis, a colored woman of the town. He struck and abused her and finally kicked in two of her ribs."

Dr. Lynch attended the woman after the beating and advised her to have Hallon arrested, advice that Cpl. Hallon obviously resented. On Saturday night, August 22, 1885, he came into town, stocked up on liquid courage at Abe Hill's saloon and fired the fatal shot at Dr. Lynch.

Arrested at the post the following day, Cpl. Hallon was placed in the Sturgis jail under armed guard. About 9:30 p.m. on August 25, several armed men gained entry to the jail and took charge of the prisoner. According to the story in the Daily Record:

Hallon confessed his crime before he swung. The Record has it four men who were there, who saw him and heard him- that he made a full and clear confession previous to his suicide by hanging.

After describing Hallon's lynching as a suicide, the newspaper reported on a jury inquiry:

The jury which consisted of Messrs. Witcher, McMillan, and Cole, returned a verdict to the effect that the deceased came to his death by strangulation, or some other climatic disease, at the hands of parties unknown.

A grand jury convened in October was more accurate. The grand jurors declared Hallon "came to his death by lynching at the hands of a mob" and added a strong criticism of lawless activities in Sturgis.

We earnestly recommend that the indictments now pending against Abe Hill and others for keeping disorderly houses at Sturgis City, be pushed to a speedy termination. We find that almost all the crime committed in Sturgis City has its origin in the dance house conducted by the said Hill, and we recommend that his license be revoked and that no keeper of a bawdy house be granted a license to sell liquors at said Sturgis City.

With or without a license, bootleg whiskey flowed freely at Poker Alice's house of ill repute on North Junction Avenue. The gambling madam once told a newspaper reporter:

I do like to get drunk, and I believe in concentration --- in applying all your talents to the matter in hand. I work at it hard and I usually stay drunk for about three days.

Tubbs kept the Fort Meade troops in line with a quick trigger finger and quicker temper. During a brawl at her house, the cigar-chewing, pistol-packing madam shot and killed one soldier and wounded two others.

Poker Alice was brought to trial and charged with murder, but she was acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide, although old timers tell the story another way. They claim her acquittal more likely resulted from her response to the judge's question about the layout of her house.

"Hell, judge," she said, "you been to my place enough times to know where every door and window is at!"