Denver Drag’s
Long and Storied History by David Duffield, History Coordinator, The Colorado LGBTQ History Project, The Center on Colfax Photos and images provided by David Duffield
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rag is about people. In Denver’s case, drag appeared almost as early as when the city was founded in 1859. During the Civil War and Gilded Age (1861-1877) there were few people in the Western U.S., and the ratio of men to women was nearly seven-to-one until 1900.
cases note Southern “negro minstrels” who had female impersonators in their all-male troops. Drag certainly had a presence on Denver stages and a regional presence in Colorado, and it wasn’t even an all-white presence, despite the problematic nature of some entertainers.
Susan K. Johnson noted in her book Roaring Camp that miners in the California gold rush would crossdress for fun, and same-gender relationships among them were common. This was also the case in Colorado, and female impersonation was used as a form of entertainment. In one case, Soapy Smith, a famous swindler and leader in early Denver, entertained at the “Great St. Leon” at the Palace Theater during the 1880s. Unfortunately, at the time, female impersonation was often paired with performative blackface.
As the 19th century ended, anticrossdressing, or “masquerade laws,” emerged across the U.S. which regulated gender presentation in public. Crossdressers themselves, according to historian Peter Boag in Redressing America’s Frontier Past, were viewed more as criminals than citizens.
Still other cases note “male impersonators” in burlesque shows. According to Lisa Duggan in Sapphic Slashers, Annie Hindle, a popular, late19th-century, male impersonator, came through Denver around 1870. Hindle later married her partner, Annie Ryan, in 1886 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1891, when Joe Gilligan was reportedly busted for passing bad checks, newspapers reported police finding dresses in his closet. They also found correspondence between another female impersonator friend in Pueblo who committed suicide. Other
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Still, female impersonation thrived in Chicago and New York at circuits like Vaudeville as part of the so-called Pansy Craze for queer theater. Julianå Eltinge was one of the most popular female impersonators during the early 20th century. Between 1905 and 1926, Eltinge played theaters like the Orpheum and Empress along Denver’s “Electric Mile” near 16th and Curtis. During WWII, female impersonators performed at Buckley Airforce Base, while bars like Mary’s Tavern were blacklisted for being queer spaces. During the 1950s, there was a crackdown on vice nationwide, and anti-cross-dressing laws were updated. In an effort to target men who crossdressed, drag was effectively outlawed in Denver in 1954.
