Hysterical Journey To Historic Places


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North America » United States » Arizona » Yuma
December 18th 2012
Published: December 18th 2012
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CASA BLANCACASA BLANCACASA BLANCA

Somewhere on or near this site once stood the Casa Blanca Hotel. During the brief time that Sarah was there it was the finest brothel in Arizona.
SARAH A. BOWMAN



Sometimes they called her The Great Western, after the steamboat. It was the biggest steamboat afloat in those days and Sarah was a hefty girl and a lusty one, but she wasn’t bigger than a steamboat. She was larger than life though. When the War with Mexico broke out in 1846 she made her sickly husband join up at Jefferson Barracks in Saint Louis and then went along with him to Texas as laundress. Before long she was also a cook and a nurse. The sickly husband finally died. Other women who accompanied the soldiers travelled by boat from Corpus Christi down to Brownsville, but Sarah purchased a team and wagon and rode along with the troops. She was their cook, nurse, laundress, teamster and harlot. In order to stay in the Army she married a soldier named Borginnes. During the siege of Fort Brown she continued her duties under fire. The soldiers continued to have hot meals and coffee even though musket balls had struck her bonnet and bread tray. When Taylor’s army moved inland she opened up a mobile restaurant, lodging house, livery stable, saloon and brothel called the American Inn. It went wherever the Army went and served as its headquarters through Monterrey and Saltillo. During the Battle of Buena Vista she manned a cannon, got slashed with a saber, and killed the Mexican who cut her. By the time the war ended she had lost track of Borginnes. When the Army tried to abandon her in Mexico she married a soldier named Davis. When they got back to Texas that union was dissolved without the formality of divorce and Sarah opened another brothel near ElPaso to serve travelers on their way to the California Gold Rush. A year later she moved on to Socorro in a partnership with Juan Duran and they ran a stable of 5 orphan girls. By 1852 she had moved on to Fort Yuma married to Al Bowman. Al was a prospector and Sarah opened another brothel, of course. During the Civil War she became the officer’s laundress and operated the officer’s mess at the Quartermaster Depot. In 1866 she died from a spider bite. After she died she was awarded the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel in the Arizona militia and buried with full military honors in the Fort Yuma Cemetery. In 1890 when Fort Yuma was abandoned to the coyotes her remains were exhumed and she is now resting at peace in the National Cemetery at the Presidio in San Francisco. The photo shows the commanding officer's quarters at the Quartermaster Depot at Yuma Crossing. It housed the officer’s mess.

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