Article: Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology and History in Virginia City

Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology and History in Virginia City. KELLY J. DIXON. University of Nevada Press, Reno, 2005. xiii + 219 pp., illus., map. $34.95 (hardcover), ISBN: 0-87417-608-5.

Reviewed by Frederick H. Smith

Hollywood films, television shows, and popular writers have depicted nineteenth-century western saloons as brutal, violent, and debauched places. In Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology and History in Virginia City, Kelly J. Dixon skillfully uses archaeological evidence to dismantle these somewhat false images of western mining town saloons conjured up in popular media. While rough-and-tumble saloons were certainly part of the urban landscape of western mining towns, Dixon shows they ...

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