Explore Steamboat June 28, It was a thinly veiled euphemism used to label prostitutes, and nobody in Routt County would have used such crude expressions. It goes to show you, Steamboat was just a little bit above. Watson is the curator of the Hayden Heritage Center and is working on a book about the local history of rowdy saloons and red-light districts and the role they played in building the communities of Northwest Colorado.
Prostitution is an acknowledged evil that entraps women in hardship and abuse. However, Watson said the fees collected by respectable towns from saloon keepers or madams helped to build civic infrastructure in the frontier American West.
And to a degree, that almost certainly included Steamboat Springs. They were known to hold bucking bronco contests in the main street and fired their pistols randomly.
At one point, a cowboy randomly firing his pistol accidentally killed a young Steamboat boy. Woolery came up with a plan to prosper while relocating the rough people to a new neighborhood across the river where their cattle already were grazing.
The neighborhood might have been dubbed Brooklyn by an artist who came west seeking relief from tuberculosis, noticed the number of immigrant families in the new neighborhood and associated it with his home of Brooklyn, N. Gus Durbin, who maintained a respectable front when he arrived in Steamboat, soon opened a saloon he named Carrie Nation to mock the temperance activist of the same name.
