The Role Of Prostitution In The California Gold Rush

Characteristically, the settlement of American land was established almost exclusively by men, especially those of European decent. Therefore, after the Louisiana purchase -- and the consequential doubling in size of the continental United States -- the western half of the country begged to be explored and settled, a job that many believed lay in the hands of the white man. Despite the “White Man’s West” that lay readily ahead of them, many potential settlers were hesitant to travel to the newly claimed land. It wasn’t until the combination of both the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the Homestead Act of 1862, alongside the construction of complex railway systems, that a mass migration from the east coast began to occur; unsurprisingly, the majority of the demographic were indeed male. Throughout several years of work in rudimentary frontier towns and countless attempts to modernize the vast expanse of land the settlers had received, the living conditions of the Wild West remained harsh, any endeavor to provide comfort collapsed, and frankly the men west of the Mississippi River became desperate for the presence and attention of their female

Without the work of diligent Madams, neither the social nor political environments of the region would have been entirely the same. The industry collected the money that supported the towns that supported its people, and the colossal effect that commercial sex had on the incredibly progressive governmental movements of the time are like no other. Overall, prostitution, a simple yet dependably lucrative form of work, shaped one of the most archetyped areas into what historians know it as today. Undoubtedly, without it the American west of the 1800s would not have been the