The Belles of San Francisco

During the early days California’s gold rush, women were a distinct minority, outnumbered about twenty to one.  In San Francisco in 1849 it was fifty to one.  There were similar numbers in Virginia City where, in 1860 there were thirty women to 2,201 men, while Denver at the same time had 1,650 men to one woman. Women as entertainers of various degrees really began to impact the West in 1851.  During the first six months of that year, more than 2,000 women, practically all of them prosti