Save the Date – June 25th
 
You are invited to a book signing and free program at the Saguache County Museum on Sunday, June 25th at 1:30 pm.  This definitely will be a program you don’t want to miss!

Tracy Beach is an author, who was raised in Salida.  She has written My Life as a Whore, the biography of Madam Laura Evens 1871-1953.  Laura called Salida home for 53 years.  Tracy was “determined to give this wonderful woman her final wish, a biography of her amazing life.” Also, she is in the process of revising The Tunnels Under Our Feet: Colorado’s Forgotten Hollow Sidewalks. 

The program will be about Laura Evens, who “wasn’t any ordinary soiled dove from the days of Colorado’s Wild West.  Raised by a Grand Cyclops of the KKK from the Mobile, Alabama, branch, she wasn’t about to let anything stand in the way of what she wanted.  She wanted to be rich.

From…a gun fight to help save her business, her failed attempts to prevent her friends from poisoning themselves, selling bootleg booze for her supplier who lay dying on her couch, hiding battered women and children from distraught husbands suffering the effects of the Depression, to identifying the corpse of a friend beaten to death by a lover – all the while achieving her goal of owning an entire red light district”, in Salida “which stayed open until December 1949…which was longer than any other in Colorado, due largely to the unusual qualities of its owner.”

Ms. Beach and her 18-year-old daughter will dress in vintage clothing for their presentation.  They will tell stories that did not make it into the book.  Some stories may be “a little naughty”.  There will be a slide show (vintage 1972 projector) with NO nude pictures, and they will present artifacts.
Ms. Beach will sign her book, My Life as a Whore, and include a really cool brass brothel token with each sale. 

Laura Evens said, “I’m not a lady of the lamp light, I’m not a soiled dove…I’m a Whore.  Call me what I am.”

​The program is free.  Refreshments are served.  Donations are accepted.
 
Connie Rapalski
719-298-7940

The Rio Grande County Museum will be having a “Midsommar” celebration on Saturday, June 24th, 2017, beginning at 10 am.  This is a Swedish holiday celebrated each year around the summer solstice to welcome the beginning of summer! Louise Colville will give a presentation about Swede Lane at 2pm.  Printed tours of Swede Lane will also be available.  In recognition of the many different groups that settled in Rio Grande County with this shared custom, the Rio Grande County Museum will also be serving different foods from the various cultures for guests to taste. Many of the early settlers from Rio Grande County came from Sweden, but many immigrants of other nationalities that settled in the county, including German, Irish, and Scottish, had their own Midsummer’s (St. John’s) Day customs.  The Hispanic population also celebrated with San Juan’s Feast Day.  Come join us for the Midsommar celebration!  The Rio Grande County Museum is located at 580 Oak Street, Del Norte, Colorado 81132.  Hours are 10am – 4pm, Tuesday through Friday, and 10am – 3pm Saturday.  Please call 719-657-2847 with any questions.