Chicken Ranch (Texas)
The Chicken Ranch was an illegal brothel in the U.S. state of Texas that operated from 1905 until 1973 in Fayette County, about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) east of downtown La Grange.
Run by a widow known as "Mrs. Swine", the brothel operated in a hotel near the saloon, and featured three young women from New Orleans, Louisiana.
The brothel was successful for over a decade, but closed during the Civil War when Swine and one of her prostitutes were forced to leave town as Yankees.
Williams maintained a good relationship with local law enforcement: by excluding drunkards and admitting politicians and lawmen, she ensured that her house would be tolerated.
In 1917, after learning of an imminent crusade against the red-light district, Williams sold her house and purchased ten acres (40,000 m2) outside the city limits of La Grange, two blocks from the Houston–Austin highway.
[4] Every evening, the local sheriff Will Loessin would visit the Chicken Ranch to learn the latest gossip and whether any patrons had boasted of crimes.
Sheriff Loessin often paced the halls, and, using an iron rod, would eject patrons of the brothel for abuses toward its employed prostitutes.
He immediately had a direct telephone line installed at the Chicken Ranch so that he could continue his predecessor's practice of gathering intel from the brothel, without having to travel there each evening.
[1] Williams began suffering from arthritis in the 1950s, and in 1952 a young prostitute named Edna Milton came to the ranch and eventually took on many of the day-to-day responsibilities of operating the brothel.
After Williams died in 1961, Milton purchased the property,[6] which she officially renamed Edna's Fashionable Ranch Boarding House.
Students at Texas A&M University also made an unofficial tradition of sending freshmen to the Chicken Ranch for initiation.
[8] In November 1972, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) surveyed the Chicken Ranch for two days, documenting 484 people entering the rural brothel.
At the request of a member of the DPS intelligence team, local law enforcement closed the Chicken Ranch for a short time.
Zindler interviewed Kitzman, who admitted to knowing about the Chicken Ranch, but claimed that he had never tried to close down the brothel because "we have never had any indication by anyone that these places are a problem to law enforcement.
After a very brief investigation, which found no evidence of a link to organized crime,[1] Briscoe and Hill ordered the Chicken Ranch to be permanently closed.
