Nevada City Live

Women who were not prostitutes were so rare in the goldfields that the Forty-niners stood for hours just to gaze upon one. Miners called them "petticoated astonishments."

In it's early days Nevada City was the third most populated town in California, the only thing it lacked waswomen!   Many of the ladies who came here wound up working at brothels.  Money was so good they couldn't resist. Oddly enough many of these gals were from respectable homes.  They would tell others that they were going to visit relatives, but thetruth is they'd come up for a weekend and wind up going back with a tidy sum in there purse.

Fact or Fiction? Disputed by some as a myth, there is a tunnel - trial from the Old Brewery to a portion of The National Hotel.  No longer there - the freeway built in the 1960's removed nearly all traces.   In the parking lot, of The National Hotel,  there is a  plaque,(click on image to enlarge) that  commemorates the approximate spot of the tunnel.   Reportedly back then, while men were having dinner and drinks with their wives, they would excuse themselves and slip away towards The National Hotel and then to Spring Street to pay a visit to the ladies.

In the early 1950's, it is said there was seven cabs in operation in just Nevada City.  These were used to visit the "working girls".  Interesting to note that recently there was only one cab working for the entire area. 

During the latter 1950's after the state began to crack down on prostitution, a friend of mine who had grown up here left the area and returned as a deputy sheriff.  Unconcerned about popularity, he arrested a gal for soliciting in a local bar.  Many of the locals were shocked that he would arrest a Lady of the the Evening.  Because she was a known prostitute, it was part of the procedure to have a doctor examine her and test her for diseases.  Having little cooperation locally, a state doctor came up from Sacramento.  After she was examined and found to have some form of creeping crud, a local doctor began to make house calls, "For a new strain of flu that could be deadly".   A few heard about the potential flu epidemic and took shots for something they didn't need.

For almost 100 years prostitution flourished openly in Nevada City, now it is hidden from the public eye.

“Got nearer to a woman this evening than I have been in six months. Came near fainting.”

- Joseph Crackbon- Nevada City man wrote in a letter.

"Even I had men come forty miles over the mountains, just to look at me, and I never was called a handsome woman in my best days."

- Luzena Stanley Wilson, early settler with her husband of Nevada City

"I have scarcely met with half a dozen respectable women, or men with their families, since I left the Atlantic States. The women of other nations, what few there are, are nearly all lewd harlots, who are drunk half the time, or sitting behind the gambling table dealing monte. To see a woman who can read and write is a curiosity. Indeed, the majority of our females are a disgrace to woman. All, all ruined!"

- Enos Christman August 9, 1851