Park City has a long and fabled history of prostitution. For 75 years, the brothels that operated here – known as cribs – were hardly a secret despite their illegality. The City benefitted from the business, receiving income via monthly fines levied and paid. With a rapid influx of miners to the area, many of whom were single men, sex workers of the time were viewed with a measure of acceptance as a necessary iniquity.
Mother Urban, Park City’s most famous madam, oversaw a row of cribs from approximately 1907 until 1933. She was followed by Bessie Wheeler, who continued the business until the mid-1950s. Both women took pride in running an operation that employed women who were educated, healthy, and treated respectfully.
In 1920, newly elected Mayor E.W. Robinson published a letter in the Park Record stating that prostitution would no longer be tolerated, but it would be another 35 years before the cribs were shuttered following the “Sin Raid” carried out by county and state officials.
Park City’s sex business generally ran smoothly, but trouble ensued from time to time. Such was the case on March 15, 1923, when a “woman of the underworld” going by the name of June St. Clair met with great misfortune. In what seems to have been a botched robbery, June was stabbed through the heart by her assailant.
Although two men forced entry quickly enough to witness the assailant fleeing the scene, June bled to death on the floor of crib 555 shortly after midnight. Responding police followed a trail of blood in the snow to the nearby residence of Pedro Cano, where they found him with blood on his hands and clothing. Despite claiming to have no knowledge of the violence, he was arrested and taken to the Park City jail.
Parkites were understandably outraged by June’s violent death and in protest, a crowd of about 150 assembled at City Hall during Pedro’s arraignment. Many would have preferred to exercise vigilante justice, which compelled law officers to move Pedro to the Coalville jail to await trial.
Credit: Photo, in the public domain, found through Find A Grave.
Pedro was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad. However, on the eve of his scheduled execution in February 1925, the Governor of Utah issued a stay while a search began for a woman who Pedro now claimed was the true assailant. He described the woman’s motive as an act of jealousy and said she dressed in his clothes to carry out the murder and staged the robbery as a cover-up.
The woman Pedro identified as the true murderer – Mrs. Refugio Alameda – had since fled the area and was presumably somewhere in California; she was never located.
Pedro was sentenced to death a second time and died by firing squad on May 15, 1925. He was 29 at the time of his death and is buried in Mount Calvary cemetery in Salt Lake City.
June St. Clair, likely in her mid-30s when she died, is buried in Park City Cemetery. At the time of her death, June was married to Charles Ward who was serving a ten-year sentence at Leavenworth for narcotics trafficking. He was permitted to travel to Utah under guard for her funeral.
In June’s obituary it was stated: “There was no reason for the wife to be leading the life of shame that she chose [sic]to lead, as for years she was employed as a designer of fashions … but the cursed drug habit [of her husband] undoubtedly dragged her down to the life she was leading when she met her death.”
The Park City Museum lecture titled “Selling Sex in Utah: A History of Vice” to have been given by author and historian Eileen Hallet Stone for Wednesday, April 3 is CANCELED.