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These are the people and friends who have written about us and have helped make our museum great!

Heather Branstetter is a freelance writer, researcher, and communications consultant living in Wallace, Idaho. After graduating from Wallace High School and studying English and philosophy at the University of Idaho, she earned a doctorate in Rhetoric and Writing from the University of North Carolina in 2012 and taught college writing for more than a decade before moving back to Wallace to commit more energy to her writing and launch a communications company, findheatherlee media.

 at her website, www.abusinessdoingpleasure.com, she shares her work from her in-progress nonfiction book, A Business Doing Pleasure: Selling Sex in the Silver Valley, about the history of prostitution in and around Wallace, from 1884-1991. She has also produced a DVD on prostitution in Wallace that is very informative and for sale in our gift shop and through her website, www.abusinessdoingpleasure.com

A retired professor of Criminal Justice from Eastern Washington University in Spokane, Washington, Moynahan is continually working on this series of books about prostitution in the American Old West, from 1849 to 1920.  Included in this group are also the soiled doves of Western Canada and Alaska.

  

Over the decades, the author has scoured the American West and Northwest collecting material from vintage diaries, letters, newspapers, photographs, books, magazines, census data, interviews, personal records, police, prison and court records in an effort to separated fact from fiction and given us an entertaining look at history as it was and not the movie version.

  

There were a number of interesting and dynamic women in the ranks of these good time girls.  Some were in constant trouble with the law and found themselves in a revolving door between jail and the streets, countless others were addicted to drugs and alcohol.  Many were ahead of their time in social matters, consequently their lives are intensely interesting to us and read like an old soap opera, engaging yet almost unbelievable.

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A crusader of sorts, Moynahan's research became more personal when he discovered Anna Moynahan, a distant relative, supported herself in the 1870s by running the Star Adair Bordello in the mining town of Georgetown, Colorado.  

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The professor has done two books pertaining to the history of prostitution in Wallace. Red Light Revelations: The Sportin' Women of Wallace and the Silver Valley, 1888 to 1909, which includes newspaper articles pertaining to the early days of the area. 

 

His other book is Red Lights in Wallace Idaho: Prostitution and The Oasis Bordello. This book tells a brief story of the development of the town and its prostitution trade. The emphasis moves quickly to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s when the trade was still active. The focus narrows to the Oasis bordello and its eventual conversion to a museum

 

Both these books, along with a selection of his other works can be found in our gift shop. If you'd like to find out more about Professor Jay and his other works and to order books online. Click on this link.

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