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A While Ago

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  • Photo courtesy of Adams Museum In the Chuck Russell collection

    Al
June 19, 2008

A While Ago

This is a picture of the Gem Theater in Deadwood, S.D. The Gem was a theater in name only because it was actually a saloon with gambling, drinking, “prize fights,” though no prizes were ever awarded, and the main attraction was a parade of “ladies of the night.” The promoter and entrepreneur was an Oskaloosa boy — Ellis Albert “Al” Swearengen. “Al” was born in Oskaloosa on July 8, 1845. His Mahaska County boyhood home was among the coal camps southwest of Oskaloosa near a town called Cricket where he may have learned the saloon trade. At the age of 31 in 1876, he and his wife, Nellie, who later divorced him on grounds of spousal abuse, traveled to the notorious town of Deadwood, S.D. to reside. Al married two more times with both of them ending as the first. He called his first saloon the “Cricket Saloon,” probably for the town of Cricket, near his boyhood home. In a year or so, Swearenger had accumulated enough money to build a much larger and grander Gem Variety Theater whose main attraction was a house of ill repute. The Gem brought in a reported $5,000 a night and sometimes $10,000. Adjusted for inflation, the figures would be $100,000 and $200,000 per night. The Gem burned down along with much of the town in 1879. It was rebuilt and 20 years later, during a moralist crusade to clean up the town, it again burned to the ground. In 1904, the body of Al Swearengen was found in the middle of a Denver Street. He apparently died of massive head wounds and was brought back to Oskaloosa by Lem, Al’s twin brother, and is buried in a Mahaska County grave.

— Chuck Russell

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A While Ago
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