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Showing posts from September, 2013

A Wild West Journey with Julia Bulette (Nonfiction)-Part 2

In Virginia City, Washington Street is also the street that you apparently turn right on to get to stagecoach rides and other tourist attractions, but it wasn't until I'd gotten down to D street or farther that I figured out I was in the right place. Troy had originally told me that I couldn't drive out to Julia's gravesite, but what I'd failed to consider was that the neighborhood up to the dump site and hiking trail was  paved and driveable. However, there was a Ferrari convention in town and the place was teeming with tourists, so I didn't feel the desire to re-park my car somewhere else and to trek back up to B street. So I started hoofing it down Washington. I had a large water bottle with me that was just over half full, a mini-cooler lunchbag full of snacks and my hiking staff. I figure I'd at least do some scouting if nothing else. I alerted my friend Erica that I'd be going on a "weird hike" and to take note if I didn't show up at ...

A Wild West Journey with Julia Bulette (Nonfiction)-Part 1

I'd first read of the famous Wild West madam Julia Bulette in Seagraves's book Soiled Doves , a collection of vignettes detailing some of the Old West's hardest-working ladies of the evening. Consolidating information from this book and from her museum in Virginia City, I learned that Julia Bulette was a woman who came to Virginia City, Nevada in 1863. According to her museum in VC, she was one of the best-known for running a brothel locally until her murder in 1867. While the museum information says that she was murdered by a "drifter," I don't doubt that he was one of the clients in her house. Her violent death struck me as having a tinge of the unresolved, though it was supposedly attended by many. My first source on her, a Gardnerville, NV local, told me that her supposed gravesite is in Flowery Hill Cemetery. Upon first arriving in VC, I learned that Flowery Hill was a tiny community through Six Mile Canyon and as of this day, does not have a documented...