Sarah Jane Creech ~ "Sadie Orchard"

Sarah Jane Creech was born in London, England in 1865. It's said she arrived in the Sierra County, New Mexico mining district in 1885 or 1886. It was here that she married a man named Orchard and later became somewhat famous as "Sadie Orchard."

One source described her husband as a "sad sack"; another as chronically unemployed and reported that Sadie started a stagecoach line ... two Concord Coaches and a freight wagon ... to provide him with a job. A third source noted that because of Orchard's slothful outlook on life, she finally ran him off and was obliged to drive the coaches herself from time to time when she couldn't hire drivers.

Perceptions of Sadie vary widely, some leaving the image of a masculine woman, along the lines of "Calamity Jane" Cannary of Deadwood. But the only thing Sadie shared with Calamity was an extensive vocabulary of vulgarities. Sadie was described as small, no more than 100 pounds, and shapely, with black hair and blue eyes. She dressed in high fashion and was proud of her tiny feet and waist. 

While she was part owner of the stage line, her main business was prostitution. She started with a house in Kingston (on Virtue Ave.) and the demand for her services, and those of her employees (colorfully named Tugboat Annie, Big Sal, Rosarita and Missouri Lil), was great. There was nothing second-rate about the way she conducted her business. She insisted her soiled doves be "good lookers" and that they dressed well, in the fashion of the day.  Sadie was civic-minded, too, organizing a fund raising drive to raise money for a church in Kingston.

By the late 1880s, Kingston was fading, but Hillsboro continued to flourish. So she relocated her business there. She never opened a bordello in Lake Valley, but it's reported that her stagecoaches delivered it's miners to the doorstep of her Hillsboro brothel. She also built the Hillsboro Hotel, described as palatial with "The Best Table in Hillsboro."

The fortunes of Hillsboro faded, but Sadie continued in business until WWI when her business declined. It was during that time when Hillsboro was hit hard with the Spanish Flu Epidemic. Sadie shed her finery and busied herself with the sick, giving solace to the dying and help to the living. She acted as nurse and cook for the stricken and helped lay out and bury the dead.

Sadie remained in Hillsboro for the rest of her life. She died there in 1943 and was buried in Hot Springs. The fortune she had earned was gone; when her possessions were sold, and her funeral expenses deducted, only $45.00 remained.