Legal Prostitution: Only in Nevada

Two lines from a 19th-Century ballad capture the full history of prostitution in Nevada: “First came the miners to work in the mine . . . then came the ladies who lived on the line.”

The year was 1859, and the Comstock Lode at Virginia City was feeding the Nevada Gold Rush. Miners came and saloons opened with prostitutes who mined silver dollars and gold dust from the men.

It was no different in California, Arizona, Colorado and other regions of the new territory, but only Nevada survived as a legal prostitution holdout in the United States.

Its legality has fluctuated with world wars, puritan administrations, city regulations, county ordinances, church lobbies--and, in 1949, a critical state Supreme Court decision.

The court ruled that brothels are a “public nuisance” and that county officials had the authority to “abate them.” Reno closed its brothels, but rural counties translated the decision as a local option to tolerate them.

In 1970, commissioners in Storey County passed Nevada’s first ordinance to license brothels. Mustang Ranch and Joe Conforte, the political power behind the push, were perfectly legal.

Two months later, the state Legislature passed a law banning brothels in counties with populations of more than 200,000, a ceiling later raised to 250,000--considerably above the levels of Storey and all but two other counties. The law effectively banned brothels in populous Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Washoe County, which contains Reno, Nevada’s second largest city, outlaws brothels by county ordinance. Brothels are also banned in Carson City, the capital.

Brothels have come a long way from the cribs and saloon girls of the bawdy-house era.

Today’s prostitutes are licensed. House rules demand condoms. All women undergo a weekly check for sexually transmitted diseases and a monthly HIV test. State health officials say no AIDS cases have been traced to a brothel.