Longest Continuously Operating Brothel In U.S. Was In Montana (And It's Haunted)

The finger that twisted through Betsy Gaines Quammen's hair wasn't attached to any living hand.

She was alone in a hallway of the notorious Dumas Brothel in Butte, Montana, researching a forthcoming book about ghost stories and their political and cultural histories, when she felt the startling touch of something supernatural.

A tour guide warned Quammen not to get separated from the group, but she lingered behind. When she quickened her step to catch up, something reached out. 

“I felt a finger in my hair curl around one of my locks,” Quammen told Cowboy State Daily. “It was very specific. It was not wind blowing. It was something you would not mistake."

Inside the 43-room Dumas Brothel, Quammen experienced something reported by other visitors and the building’s new owners, who say spirits inside the space have been speaking to visitors ever since Charlee and David Prince accidentally became its owners seven years ago. 

“We've had people and everything from just feeling uneasy to feeling physically sick to having their hair patted, their backside pinched,” said Charlee Prince, who came to Butte in 2018 for a surgery and left the owner of the longest continuously running brothel in the U.S., which was in continuous operation for 92 years.

As Butte historian Dick Gibson wrote, "Prostitution and brothels were made illegal in Butte in 1890 — illegal but tolerated so completely that brothels operated openly in Butte until 1982."

A 2012 story in The Missoulian reporting the death of the last living madame noted the local sheriff — Bob Butorovich — said it wasn’t as simple as coming in and shutting down the Dumas because it took evidence that prostitution was taking place.

He argued that with so many young, single miners, prostitution had become a fact of life in Butte.

“That was one of the main professions in Butte,” he said.

Chance Encounter

Prince and her husband David are from Forsyth, Montana — 320 miles away. They were staying at the Miner’s Hotel, chatting with the owner about Butte being such a haunted city.

The conversation turned to the infamous Dumas Brothel, and the hotel owner mentioned it was in default on property taxes.

"We had no idea when the sale would be," Prince recalled. "When we got up the next morning and were reading the paper, right on the front page, it was the tax sale.”

The sale was scheduled for that day. An hour and a half later, they owned the brothel.

"We have kind of a history that we had done paranormal investigating," Prince said. "It's kind of one of those evening chats you have with your spouse, ‘Now, wouldn't it be neat if someday we owned our own haunted location that was ours?’"

For $25,000 at the December 2018 tax sale, the Princes became the unlikely proprietors of what locals claim as the longest continuously operating brothel in the United States — a sprawling brick and stone building that housed ladies of the evening from 1890 to 1982. 

Other brothels in Idaho, Nevada and Louisiana make similar claims, but Butte remains resolute — it’s home to the workplace of more prostitutes for a longer time than any other city — and the Dumas Brothel has the residual spirits to prove it. 

"When we walk into the building, every time we come in, we always speak to the ladies," Prince said. "We say, 'Hello, we're back.' And several times we have gotten a response to that. You can hear with your own ears, they speak to you and there's a very friendly, feminine voice. It says, ‘Hello.’"

The responses aren't consistent — Prince estimates it's happened about four times in the years they've owned it — but other paranormal activity occurs regularly. 

"We have places that are frequently, very frequently reliable for getting paranormal activity," she noted. 

Literary Discovery

The brothel’s previous owners had been hoarders, with Prince estimating that 38 of the 43 rooms were "packed from the back wall to the door with stuff." 

But amid the clutter, the Princes discovered a literary treasure: the complete manuscript for a book called "Venus Alley."

"There was a book written by the gentleman who bought the building from the last madam," Prince explained. "When he took over the building, he found a diary that one of the girls had kept when it was open and he wrote a historical fiction book about it, based around her diary.

"We found his handwritten outline of the book and then we found the manuscript that he would have submitted."

Venus Alley, the notorious back-alley entrance to many of Butte's brothels, ran directly behind the Dumas. 

"It was kind of like the main drag of the red-light district," Prince said. "The gentlemen would walk down it and see a lot of girls outside smoking, having a drink, chatting it up with the ladies, deciding who would get their favor that night."

Or that day. For a time, the brothel offered a lunch-hour “half and half” special, with customers left to figure out what “half and half” meant exactly. 

Infamous Incident

Amid the building's dark history, one story stands out: the mysterious death of Madam Elinor Knott in 1955.

"There's a story around her that says she was going to leave — she was going to run away and start her life over with a businessman who was married," Prince recounted. "On the night they were to leave, he didn't show up. The story says she committed suicide by alcohol and sleeping pills. Most people who have done the history on it think she was probably murdered, but she was found dead in the madam's quarters the next morning."

Elinor's spirit reportedly still roams the halls. 

"Her apparition is seen to walk the hallway from the madam's quarters towards the stairs, carrying her suitcase," Prince said.

While stories of brothels are often shadowed by scandal and tragedy, red light districts actually infused virtue into the surrounding community.  

Kehli Hazlett, tourism director with the Butte Chamber of Commerce, wants visitors to understand this broader historical context when it comes to places like the Dumas. 

A Montana native who previously worked at the University of Wyoming, Hazlett argues that red light districts across the West deserve more credit for their sense of civic duty. 

"What people don't realize is that there weren't a lot of opportunities for different occupations as a woman during that point in time,” Hazlett told Cowboy State Daily. “Some miners died in the mines. It would usually leave the wife without a home because they couldn't pay rent. So the women tried to find different ways to survive, and one of the ways some women did it was to work in prostitution."

They were victims of circumstance, but also community builders, said Hazlett. 

"These women put money toward churches, for infrastructure, for cities," Hazlett said. "They get a bad rap when they were making their community better, sending kids to college, building government buildings."

As a Butte native, Hazlett draws from personal family history: "My great grandmother owned a boarding house, and she rented rooms to miners. The miners always gave the money that they owed to the women that worked in the brothel. But my great grandmother never got paid on time or the right amount of money.”

However, the girls at the brothel, they always paid on time. So she reserved her nicer cabins for them to rent. 

"There's a lot of strong women that made the West," Hazlett concluded. "I think what the women did with that money should be recognized rather than being looked down on."

Take A Tour

Today, the Dumas offers guided tours lasting about an hour and 15 minutes, "full of history, full of stories," said Prince.

The building is available for scheduled tours from Memorial Day to Labor Day, with the Princes making the 320-mile trip from Forsyth every other weekend.

If the weather holds out, the tours will continue into October, said Prince. 

For those brave enough to spend the night among the spirits of Venus Alley, private events allow visitors to conduct their own ghost hunting "basically all night,” she said. 

Prince sees the Dumas as more than just a tourist attraction — it's a window into an essential piece of Western history that deserves recognition rather than shame.

“It's an undeniable part,” said Prince. “I think it was sort of seen in those times as a necessary evil, you know, a necessary thing. There were all those men and virtually no women. It's a boomtown kind of thing. It was one of the biggest red-light districts in the country at its peak."

In addition to ghostly spirits showing up, Prince has also heard from a former sex worker. 

"I've had a girl called me who was a prostitute there. I would say probably during the ‘70s. So she would have been one of the later girls,” said Prince. “She just wanted to know what was happening with the building and to say that she had been there. It was just like a reminiscing call — reminiscing about news and life being there."

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.