Swearengen opened the Gem Variety Theater on April 7, 1877, at the corners of Wall and Main streets to entertain the population of the mining camp with "prize fights" (as was customary with Swearengen's previous establishment the Cricket Saloon, no prizes were actually involved), stage acts consisting of comedians, singers and dancers, and primarily, prostitutes.Many still resisted, but those who escaped this fate could only find themselves in no better situation, as penniless women with no source of income, alone in a rough and rowdy mining camp, and with the constant threat of Swearengen's men hanging over them.The violence in the Gem was not confined to the prostitutes, with the saloon being a frequent site of gunfights between drunken patrons;[1] and in one memorable instance, the memoirs of John S. McClintock reported a prostitute named "Trixie" having shot a large hole through the skull of a man who astounded everyone by surviving for another half an hour.Swearengen built an even larger and more grand establishment, reopening in December 1879 to adulation as the finest theater ever seen in Deadwood.Despite the Gem's history as Deadwood's longest-lived entertainment institution, its support by so many of the town power brokers over the years, and the glowing tributes in the press after the rebuilt Gem was unveiled, after its demise it was reviled in the press as an evil institution and a town shame.
