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Rogers walked the streets from the s to the s, if not longer. Some say she was a hooker into her 70s. Great Falls history mostly ignores women like Rogers, but signs of their trade remain downtown. Gardner and other members of the Preservation Players and Downtown Chicks researched the local history of the oldest profession while organizing brothel tours this year. What they found may come as a surprise to many. Helena and Butte have storied scarlet pasts.
Great Falls history has been whitewashed, however. The jail's phone number remains written on the wall where a phone hung on the second story of the Rolfe Block at Central Ave. There cribs that housed prostitutes remain altered only by decay in the decades since the women left. The call button that summoned women is still in the wall. While the first floor was a furniture store, the upper floors of what's now Ferrin's Furniture at 1st Ave.
Now used for storage, the uppermost floors are still divided into small rooms. Prostitution still goes on under our very noses," she added, noting arrests in at a massage parlor. Most bordellos in the West, as in Great Falls, were home to two to eight women, retired Spokane professor and Western prostitution expert Jay Moynahan found. Several influential madams largely controlled the business, though some women walked the streets.
