[2] Venus Alley rose in the 1880s during the heyday of Butte as a wide-open copper-mining town, full of hundreds of saloons and gambling halls.
[3] The women who worked the cribs typically wore brightly colored and short-skirted dresses, and would stand in the windows to attract customers.
[6] The cribs were equipped with call boxes for ordering drinks or food from nearby bars and noodle parlors.
[6] The area expanded in around 1916 when the price of copper rose to a new high, but was closed down the following year by Federal law designed to protect WW1 soldiers from venereal disease.
[6] The area reopened in the 1930s,[6] and a screening fence erected at the end of the alley to keep the activities hidden from the public view.