MATTIE SILKS

In the summer of 1877, two women squared off on a dusty Denver street in a confrontation that would become frontier legend. Mattie Silks—already famed as the "Queen of Denver's Red Light District"—glared at her rival madam, Kate Fulton. Both were armed with pistols in hand​. The quarrel was personal: a charismatic gambler named Cortez "Cort" Thomson had stolen both women's hearts​. According to later lore, the pair might have even stripped to their waists and dueled in broad daylight​. In truth, the newspapers described a "disgraceful row" and noted the minor gunshot wound to Cort's neck. This blend of fact and myth captured the essence of Mattie Silks' life—a life fueled by ambition, audacity, and drama in the American Wild West.

     Mattie Silks was born Martha Nimon around 1845 in Fayette County, Pennsylvania​. One of five children of a farming family, she was raised on the Indiana frontier, but young Martha hungered for more than a quiet rural life. In her teenage years, she struck out on her own sometime during the Civil War era. By age 19, she had reinvented herself as "Mattie Silks" and was running a brothel in Springfield, Illinois – earning a reputation as the youngest madam on the frontier​. Mattie proved to be a shrewd businesswoman from the start. At one of her first establishments, she hung a cheeky sign reading, "Men taken in and done for."​ This bit of dark humor hinted at the savvy and bold personality that would define her career.

     Mattie's operation quickly expanded westward. She worked in booming cattle towns like Abilene and Dodge City, and she was soon lured further by the Colorado gold rushes, where demand for "soiled doves" (prostitutes) was sky-high​. Mattie hit the road in true pioneer style by gathering a troupe of girls. Her entourage traveled by stagecoach and wagon, even converting one coach into a "portable boarding house" so business could continue on the move​. Ever the strategist, Mattie made camp just outside each new mining town—downhill from the settlement. As she wryly explained, prospective clients were far more inclined to walk down a mountain than to climb up one for an evening's pleasure​. By the mid-1870s, her journey had led to Colorado Territory, where even greater fortunes awaited her.

     Mattie arrived in Denver around 1876, just as the frontier city boomed. She set up shop on Holladay Street (infamously known as "the wickedest street in the West"), an area teeming with saloons, gambling halls, and brothels​. Business thrived amid the miners, cowboys, and wealthy gentlemen passing through town. Mattie was a striking woman—short, blue-eyed, and blonde—blessed with a lively, competitive spirit. She cultivated an air of elegance in a rough city. Her gowns were lavish and custom-made, often sewn with two special pockets: one for gold coins and the other for her ivory-handled pistol​. Mattie liked to boast that no man alive had enough money to buy her; unlike her employees, she claimed never to sell her own favors​. Instead, she presented herself as a pure business proprietor. Whether or not that claim was strictly valid, it enhanced her mystique. Under Mattie's management, her "girls" were known for their beauty and charm, and she ensured they were well cared for.

     By the late 1870s, Mattie Silks had become Denver's most celebrated madam, earning her the title "Queen of the Red Light District."​ She ran one of the city's finest parlor houses, a far cry from the squalid one-room "cribs" used by lower-end prostitutes​. Ever ambitious, Mattie bought up property around town to expand her empire, including adjacent buildings and a ranch in rural Yuma County for breeding racehorses​. Her business acumen paid off handsomely. By her later estimation, Mattie raked in close to $2 million over her career (and just as quickly spent it on the luxuries of life)​. Inevitably, she faced competition: another enterprising madam, Jennie Rogers, opened the opulent House of Mirrors brothel in 1898 and, for a time, outshone Mattie's establishment. But Mattie had the last laugh – after Jennie died in 1909, she purchased the House of Mirrors for $14,000, firmly reasserting her supremacy in Denver's vice trade​.

     Mattie's rise was not without conflict. Besides business rivalry, she engaged in open feuds—most famously with Kate Fulton, a fellow madam. Their rivalry climaxed with the notorious duel of 1877. The trouble began when Mattie fell in love with Cortez "Cort" Thomson, a flamboyant former fireman and champion foot racer known around Colorado for sporting pink tights and star-spangled racing trunks​. Cort had a roguish charm and was involved with Kate Fulton before Mattie came along​. The two women's animosity over this man escalated into a confrontation on the streets of Denver in August 1877.

     Legend would later embellish this encounter into a full-blown pistol duel. One popular version had Mattie and Kate meeting on Colfax Avenue, stripping to the waist to avoid ruining their dresses and exchanging gunfire at close range​. The only person hit by a bullet, the story goes, was Cort Thomson himself – struck in the neck as an unlucky bystander​. In reality, contemporary reports suggest a less romanticized fracas. The Rocky Mountain News noted that on August 26, 1877, Mattie Silks and Kate Fulton got into "a disgraceful row," during which Cort received a "not serious pistol wound." Kate was beaten and bruised in the brawl, and she hastily left town for a time​. Mattie, ever victorious, walked away with her lover and an enhanced reputation in Denver folklore. The tale of the first recorded duel between two women in Denver only added to her notoriety​, proving that Mattie Silks could literally and figuratively fight to protect her interests.

     Behind the madam's calm professionalism lay a tumultuous personal life. Mattie's surname "Silks" likely came from an early relationship or marriage to a man known as Silks (perhaps a Charley or George Silks), though the union details are hazy​. Her true great love was undeniably Cortez Thomson. Cort was far from an ideal partner – he was a gambler, heavy drinker, cattle rustler, and general scoundrel by many accounts​. Mattie's friends whispered that he was unworthy of her devotion, but she adored him. She bankrolled his high-flying lifestyle with the proceeds of her brothels, buying him fine clothes and letting him indulge in gambling sprees. Reputedly, Cort had never worked a day, yet he strutted around Denver draped in diamonds bought with Mattie's money​. He repaid her with frequent betrayals. On more than one occasion, Cort's infidelity drove Mattie to fury; once, catching him with a rival madam, she brandished a pistol at the other woman until Cort snatched it away and beat Mattie "unmercifully" for her jealousy​.

     Despite the abuse, Mattie remained loyal. In 1884, shortly after Cort's first wife died, Mattie formally married him in Indiana​. Their years together were stormy. Court records show that in 1891, Mattie finally filed for divorce, citing Cort's drunkenness, violence, and philandering​. Yet even then, when face to face with losing him, she relented and withdrew the divorce petition after Cort pleaded for forgiveness. Mattie's endurance with Cort astonished those around her. To keep him out of trouble, she bought a 1,400-acre ranch near Wray, CO, and sent Cort there to manage her stable of 21 racehorses safely away from Denver's temptations​. During the mid-1880s, a little girl (either Cort's illegitimate daughter or perhaps his granddaughter) came into their care​. Cort wanted nothing to do with the child, but Mattie's maternal instincts took over – she legally adopted the girl and paid for her to attend a fine boarding school back East​. This kindness showed a softer side of the hard-edged madam not often seen by the public.

     Cortez Thomson's end came rather suddenly. In April 1900, after one binge too many, he collapsed in a Colorado hotel – reportedly from ptomaine poisoning after eating spoiled oysters (though others whispered it was a lethal mix of whiskey and opium). Mattie rushed to his side and, true to form, spared no expense in caring for him. In the early hours of one morning, as Cort lay delirious and near death, he allegedly accused Mattie of poisoning him and threatened to kill her. Mattie, in a dramatic flourish, handed him her pistol and said, "If that's how you feel, darling, go ahead and kill me." Cort lacked the strength to pull the trigger. Within an hour, he was dead in her arms​. Grief-stricken, Mattie buried Cort in style, providing a lavish funeral and a plot at Denver's Fairmount Cemetery. He was interred under the name C.D. Thomson, and Mattie ensured the man who caused her so much pain still rested by her side in death​.

     Mattie Silks lived on for decades after Cort's death. She continued to invest and manage her remaining properties, and in 1923, at the age of 77, she decided to take one last chance on love. Mattie married her longtime associate and former bouncer, John "Handsome Jack" Ready, a man many years her junior​. By then, Denver's wild red-light days were fading—authorities had cracked down on open prostitution, and Mattie had retired to a quiet, respectable life. She and Jack lived in a comfortable house on Lawrence Street, away from the old vice district. Neighbors might have been unaware that the polite, elderly Mrs. Ready had once been the most infamous madam in Colorado.

     In her later years, Mattie's health began to fail. She had grown stout and used a wheelchair after an injurious fall in old age​. Yet she still loved a good party. On Christmas Day 1928, at a holiday gathering, the 82-year-old Mattie Silks rose from her chair to join a champagne toast. Tragically, she stumbled and fell again, re-fracturing her hip​. The injury proved too much for her aging body. Mattie was taken to Denver General Hospital, where she dictated a last will from her bed. She died on January 7, 1929, from complications of the fall at the age of 83​​.

     The Queen of Denver's tenderloin passed away nearly penniless and almost alone. A lifetime of lavish spending had whittled her fortune down to a modest estate of about $4,000 in property and $2,500 in jewels. Her most precious remaining possessions were two diamond rings and an eleven-diamond crucifix necklace she always wore​. Few people attended Mattie's funeral. In a simple, clergy-free graveside service, she was laid to rest under her legal name, Martha A. Ready​. True to her wishes, she was buried beside Cort Thomson's unmarked grave at Fairmount Cemetery​. Her widower, "Handsome Jack" Ready, inherited half of her scant estate (the other half going to Mattie's adopted daughter)​. Jack himself died just a few years later in destitution, his burial paid for by charitable collections from Denver saloon patrons​.

Thus ended the remarkable life of Mattie Silks. She had risen from a restless farm girl to a wealthy brothel madam who reigned over Denver's vice underworld for decades. Mattie experienced all the extremes the Wild West offered: fabulous wealth and crushing loss, public acclaim, and private anguish. She was, by turns, calculating, generous, ruthless, and compassionate. As one newspaper writer eulogized, "Mattie Silks was a bad woman, but not altogether bad."​ In a society that offered women few respectable options, Mattie forged her path with unapologetic boldness. To this day, her name lingers in Colorado folklore as the flamboyant, fearless madam who became a legend of the American Wild West.​