The best-known sporting men of the West presided over and patronized gambling houses that were often the most impressive and elaborately accoutered structures of the cities. Some brothels became elegantly furnished parlor houses with attractive ‘boarders’ managed by madams whose names were famous throughout the West. And if the community developed into a city, saloons were housed in imposing brick buildings with ornate bars, huge back-bar mirrors and brilliant chandeliers. As the towns grew and prospered, these primitive facilities were replaced by one-story wooden buildings with false fronts to make them appear even larger. In the early camps, the structure might be only a lantern-lit, dirt-floored tent, the bar simply a board stretched between two whiskey barrels, the prostitution facility just a cot in a wagon bed for the use of a single female strumpet, and the gambling outfit only a rickety table, a few chairs and a greasy, dog-eared deck of cards. Saloons, brothels and gambling halls would appear almost overnight. Recreation for the almost totally male population inevitably meant the triple-W vices of the frontier: whiskey-drinking, whoring and wagering. As towns sprouted in the 19th-century American West - outside Army forts, at river crossings along wagon trails, in mining districts and at railheads - some of the first structures built were recreational facilities.
