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- Entertaining Women, Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Entertaining Women, Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
The gold rush west was dotted with mining boomtowns and bustling new cities that sprang up overnight around strikes. Fortunes were made and lost daily, lawlessness was commonplace, and gambling dens, saloons, brothels, and dance halls thrived, but after a while the miners and merchants began to long for more polished amusements. Soon theaters popped up in tents and then in auditoriums, and playhouses were built where operas, arias, and Shakespeare were performed by brave actors, dancers, singers, and daredevils who were lured by the call of the West.
Many of the most popular female entertainers of the mid- and late 1800s performed in the boomtowns, drawn by the same desire for riches that attracted miners and merchants there, and these women brought with them a variety of talents and programs. Though they were sometimes literally showered with gold, their personal lives were often marked by tragedy and unhappiness. These stories reveal not only the entertaining side, but also some of the hardships of the American West.