FRONTIERADO IS THIS FRIDAY, AUGUST THIRD!
With the Frontierado holiday almost upon us what better time to examine 3 more figures who helped make the American west wild?
3. LOTTIE DENO – Equally comfortable dealing faro, playing poker or shooting a pistol Charlotte “Lottie” Deno was one of the most famous female gamblers of the old west, along with Poker Alice. Lottie didn’t engage in nearly as many gunfights as Poker Alice did, but she didn’t have to, since she was very skilled at maneuvering lovesick men into doing some of her killing for her. Even her no-good husband Johnny Golden was bumped off by two of Lottie’s male conquests.
Lottie, who said she learned card-playing from her father, was a former southern belle who came west after the Confederacy fell. She spent three years in San Antonio dealing faro and playing poker in, among other places, the iconic vaudeville saloon of Jack Harris, where Texas Ben Thompson and King Fisher were killed the same night in 1884. Fellow gambler Frank Thurmond began a romance with Lottie but when he Continue reading
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