The Yampa Valley Sin Circuit: Historic Red-Light Districts of Routt and Moffat Counties

Far from the rest of civilization, but with plenty of money and booze close at hand, Steamboat Springs and the surrounding towns of Oak Creek, Yampa, Hayden and Craig were filled with shady characters with even shadier pasts. Many of the saloonkeepers in these areas opened multiple enterprises, allowing the various soiled doves of the region to move from town to town and bar to bar every few months to keep business fresh or to escape entanglements that had gone sour. Historian Laurel Watson unearths the seamy history of Yampa Valley’s early red-light districts and the people who called them home.