Real estate appraisal card. 130 W. Sackett Avenue, pt. SE 1/4, Sec. 32 T 50N R 9E, in Salida, Colorado.
This building was constructed about 1906. The 1909 and 1914 Sanborn maps show this building divided into six units and labeled "female boarding," a Sanborn Map Company euphemism for a place of prostitution. This building is visible on 1926 and late 1930s overview photographs of Salida taken from Tenderfoot Hill.
These "cribs" were operated by Salida's most famous madam, Laura Evans, and she may have been the original owner. Accounts of her life indicate she acquired this building in 1906. This block of W. Sackett Avenue (then known as W. Front Street) was the town's Red Light District and contained a number of houses of prostitution. Railroad workers and travelers provided a large client base for the district. In the 1905-06 city directory, units in this building were numbered 1 through 6 W. Sackett Avenue, with each unit occupied by a single woman who listed no occupation.
Laura Evans operated brothels at 113 and 129 W. Sackett Avenue during the twentieth century. According to an account in One Hundred Years in the Heart of the Rockies, Ms. Evans married young, deserted her family, changed her name, and became a prostitute. She came west to Denver's Market Street and spent three years in Leadville, before settling in Salida in the late 1890s. She continued to operate her business until 1950, when the local District Attorney finally forced her to close.
Accounts of Ms. Evans' life in Salida are replete with numerous good works. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, she reportedly suspended operations and provided rooms for the sick and sent her girls to aid in nursing flu victims. During the Depression, food baskets and coal were provided to needy families. Abused women were given shelter. One Salida politician remarked: "I doubt if anybody will ever know how many people Laura helped. She was an entire Department of Social Services long before there was such a thing."
Laura Evans listed her occupation on census returns and in city directories as the keeper of a lodging house. After her operations were closed down in 1950, she rented rooms to railroad workers. Ms. Evans died at 129 W. Sackett Avenue on 6 April 1953.
