West of the Creek: Murder, Mayhem, and Vice in Old San Antonio

Like Denver and San Francisco, San Antonio shed its raucous frontier image as it grew into a modern metropolis. Most books on this colorful phase of San Antonio's history are long out of print. The tribal memory of roaring towns of the Old West has fallen on places like Tombstone, Deadwood and Dodge City. West of the Creek fills this void, reminding readers that gamblers like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson came to San Antonio, that Rowdy Joe Lowe ran a saloon on Main Plaza, that Butch Cassidy got away in time to escape the fate of fellow train robber Deaf Charley, who found himself at the business end of a lawman's six-shooter. A general sense of lawlessness contributed to a number of notorious lynchings and murders among the general populace, reported in later sections of the book. San Antonio had its own Hell's Half Acre, this one a 22-block area west of San Pedro Creek where a red-light district flourished for decades, complete with its own Blue Book guide to the ladies. City boosters didn't talk about it. But author David Bowser shatters the silence with a carefully-researched, first-ever map of more than 100 houses of ill repute. And he identifies inhabitants. The author tells of madams like Fannie Porter, who entertained the gang of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid while they hid out from the Pinkerton men, and Mary Volino, who reformed and turned her house into a rescue home for "fallen women" and unwed mothers—still operated, in its third location, by the Methodist Church