July 28, 2025
Hello There Reader
The True Grit of Women Who Gambled for Power, Freedom, and Fortune
Women can be just as rough and tough as men. The ladies of the “Wild West” in this posting were notorious female gamblers. Fierce and strong as any man, but in a different way. In this time period women had to use their charms and wits instead of the brawn a man usually displays.
From Dodge City to the Drawing Room: The Lasting Legacy of Gunsmoke’s Miss Kitty
Lottie Deno, who came to be characterized as Miss Kitty on the TV show Gunsmoke. She also went by the names Carlotta J. Thompkins, Charlotte Tompkins, Charlotte Thurmond, Mystic Maud, “the Angel of San Antonio,” and “Queen of the Pasteboards” at different times in her life. She came by her gambling skills honestly, learning them from her plantation-owner father.
Lottie and Thurmond (her lover at the time) traveled the Texas circuit, but eventually opened their own gambling room in Kingston, New Mexico, and later a restaurant in Silver City, New Mexico. She and Thurmond were finally married in 1880 and settled in Deming, New Mexico.
Madame Moustache: The Elegant Outlaw of the Card Table
Then there’s Eleanor Dumont, called Madame Moustache because of her appearance later in life. However, when she was young, she was regarded as exceedingly beautiful. Her occupation of gambler, prostitute, and madam led her into Montana, Idaho, Utah, South Dakota, Arizona, and anywhere there was money in a boomtown.
At a certain point, she eventually added prostitution to her repertoire and acted as a real “Madame.” At first offering herself and later hiring girls to work in her houses. She was found in Silver City and Corinne, Utah. Silver strikes brought her back to Nevada where she found herself in Virginia City.
Eventually, she would be found in Deadwood, South Dakota and then Tombstone, Arizona. In Tombstone, she was known to drum up business by dressing her girls in finery and driving a fancy carriage up and down the streets, smoking a cigar, to the cheers of onlookers. Her final stop was the notorious Bodie, California in 1878.
As time would have it, her luck finally ran out, and about a year and a half after arrival in Bodie, she borrowed $300 from a friend to open a table. After a few hours, she lost it all. Without a word, she left the table and walked a mile out of town and committed suicide by drinking a bottle of red wine laced morphine. Her body was discovered the next day, September 8, 1879, her head resting on a rock and with a note explaining that she was “tired of life.”
Big Nose Kate and Doc Holliday
Big Nose Kate as she came to be known because of another prostitute name Kate. Kate was a larger-than-life character who lived to see stories of her own life and death told as a legend of the Old West.
She never denied that she was a rip-roarin', hard-drinkin,' gun-slingin' prostitute who supposedly married “Doc” Holiday, but nobody knows for sure. Their relationship was one of on and off again. Therefore, lots of fighting ensued between her and Doc Holliday. Including an alleged gunfight in Bisbee, Arizona.
In real life, she died in bed, till age 89 and stayed at the Arizona Pioneers' Home until her death on November 2, 1940, five days before her 90th birthday.
She survived a world that was hard on both women and horses. She lived throughout Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and South Dakota.
Kate said of life: "Part is funny and part is sad, but such is life any way you take it."
Baby Doe Tabor and her Matchless Mine
Baby Doe Tabor’s story is infamous. She met Horace Tabor, a silver magnate and Colorado’s lieutenant governor, and the two fell in love. Tabor lost his fortune in the Panic of 1893, and the family had to give up the mansion and move into a rented house.
Tabor worked in the mines until he was appointed postmaster, but died soon after. Baby Doe could have remarried, but she chose to try making Tabor’s Matchless Mine profitable again. In her efforts, she lived in a mine shack in Leadville, CO for the last 30 years of her life and died in poverty.
"Tules" of the Ortiz Mountains-Queen of Cards and Controversy
Born in 1880, this Mexican saloon owner and gambler was known as the Queen of Sin. Maria Gertrudis Barcelo or Tules, – the shortened version of her middle name, Gertrudis. Tules (which means slender reed) operated a gambling den in New Mexico’s Ortiz Mountains, (not far from Cerrillos, NM) and became an accomplished player of the card game Monte, often winning huge amounts from her male clientele.
However, she got caught and was fined. When she died in 1852, she had amassed a fortune of $10,000 (which was worth closer to $300,000 in those days), and she owned several houses. Not bad for a life of sin…
These stories are just snippets of these notorious female gamblers who were more than just masters of the card table — they were bold risk-takers in every sense of the word. In a time and place when women were expected to stay silent and small, they carved out lives of independence, danger, and undeniable impact. Their journeys were rarely easy, but they lived fully, fearlessly, and always on their own terms.
