(CRIPPLE CREEK, Colo.) — At the height of the gold mine rush in Cripple Creek, 50,000 people called the mountain town home. Where the gold was, so were the brothels. Including the Old Homestead House, the only standing brothel left in Cripple Creek. Today, it operates as a museum on Meyers Avenue.
“It was a ratio of 10 men to every woman,” Charlotte Baumgarnder of The Old Homestead Parlor House Museum said. “What I’m trying to say is the women who worked inside of these brothels, the money that they made, particularly from the miners, they then invested in the communities… Payday was a very busy place on Meyers Avenue.”
The red light district of Cripple Creek, the Old Homestead Parlor House, was the most elite, “and the most expensive.”…