Saloon · Grass Valley · Gold Rush California
Lola Montez
Born Eliza Gilbert, Limerick, Ireland, 1818 — Died New York City, 1861
She couldn't act. She couldn't dance. She said this was the audience's problem. Her first London performance closed to hisses, boos, and catcalls. As far as Lola was concerned, a star was born.
She drifted through Europe accumulating lovers — Franz Liszt, Alexandre Dumas — and a reputation. When Franz Liszt grew exhausted by her, he locked her in their hotel room while she slept and fled, leaving money at the front desk for the furniture he knew she'd smash when she awoke.
In Munich, she charged into King Ludwig I's private study demanding justice from a theater manager who'd fired her. When the King awkwardly asked whether her figure was a work of nature or of art, she snatched scissors from his desk and slit the front of her dress to the waist. She left with a theater engagement. The manager was fired. Ludwig fell desperately in love. He built her a palace with a marble fountain that sprayed perfumed water. Lola effectively ruled Bavaria — introducing Napoleonic law, harassing the Jesuits, alarming the entire continent — until student riots cost Ludwig his crown and Lola caught the midnight train out of town.
At 35 she opened a frontier saloon in Grass Valley, outfitting it with Louis XVI cabinets, ormolu mirrors, Ludwig's jewels, a pet bear, a swan bed, gold leaf everywhere, and every Governor, Senator, or millionaire she could haul through the door. It was, at last, a hit.
Letters found after her death revealed she had been plotting the entire time: Lola intended to cause California to declare independence and crown herself Queen of "Lolaland."
She died at 43 in a wretched New York boardinghouse, alone. Her two children declined to claim the body — one was constrained by the pressures of business; the other was in jail.
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Stagecoach Driver · California · 1812–1879
Charlie Parkhurst
"One-Eyed Charlie" — the first woman to vote in the United States
Charlie drove stage for a living and was good at it — famous for having ended the life of a feared bandit who made the mistake of trying to rob the wrong coach. Charlie wore a patch over one eye, having lost it in a fight with a horse. A scarf around the neck, always. Men's clothes, always.
Nobody questioned it. Charlie was just Charlie — a skilled whip, a steady hand, someone you wanted handling the reins through the mountain passes.
When Charlie died in 1879, the people who came to prepare the body discovered what no one had known: Charlie was a woman. She had dressed as a man her entire adult life.
In 1868, Charlie had voted in a California election. Because everyone thought she was a man, no one stopped her. That made Charlie Parkhurst the first woman to cast a ballot in the United States — fifty-two years before the 19th Amendment gave women the legal right to do so.
She is buried in Aptos, California. Her grave marker reads: "Voted in 1868."
Outlaw · California · 1829–1888(?)
Black Bart
Charles Boles — the gentleman poet bandit
Between 1875 and 1883, Black Bart robbed 28 Wells Fargo stagecoaches. He never fired a shot. He was unfailingly polite to the passengers. He worked alone, always on foot, and always disappeared into the landscape afterward.
At several crime scenes he left a poem, signed Black Bart, the PO8:
"I've labored long and hard for bread,
For honor and for riches,
But on my corns too long you've tread,
You fine-haired sons of bitches."
He was eventually caught — not by a gunfight or a chase, but by a laundry mark on a handkerchief he dropped at a crime scene. A Wells Fargo detective traced it to a laundry in San Francisco. He served six years in San Quentin, was released in 1888, and was never reliably heard from again.