(8/19/98)
BUTTE, Mont. (AP) -- Harking back to Butte's rough and rowdy days, a park in Butte will be dedicated next week to the prostitutes who plied their trade in this mining town's turn-of-the-century red-light district.
The dedication of the Copper Block Park is a project of Norma Jean Almodovar, executive director of the International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education (ISWFACE).
Almodovar has agreed to buy the famed 108-year-old Dumas Hotel and is trying to raise $95,000 to close the deal and turn it into a museum to commemorate the lives of prostitutes. The statue will portray a cowboy engaging in sexual intercourse with a prostitute.
The Dumas was the longest-running brothel in the United States, back in the days when Butte was known as the ``richest hill on earth'' for its round-the-clock copper mines.
Now, the city in southwest Montana is home to just 34,000 people and bears the deep scars of abandoned mining pits. But in the Dumas, it also boasts the nation's only remaining example of brothel architecture in the Victorian era.
Copper Block Park, in the historic Uptown section of Butte, is actually a parking lot ringed with life-size statues. The parking lot is on the site of another brothel that was torn down.
The dedication is planned for Aug. 27 and tours of the Dumas will be given on that day and on Aug. 28.
The foundation's Web site says ``Mayflower Madam'' Sydney Biddle Barrows will be on hand for the park dedication. But Butte-Silver Bow County officials won't.
Colleen Fine, the county's community development director, said the park isn't finished yet. ``We're not doing the dedication. We can't do anything that's not done,'' she said in Tuesday's editions of The Montana Standard of Butte.
Almodovar says the county approved the dedication ceremony months ago. She said she's heard rumors that the county isn't showing up because officials are afraid they will appear to be condoning prostitution.
``We're not looking for that,'' Almodovar said. ``What matters is that they are not ignoring and overlooking the women ... who contributed to Butte.''
``Wooooo-haw! Look at the ass on that one!'' said an unidentified resident of a nearby apartment complex.