THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR
It wasn’t a very polite question to ask an older gentleman—one of the last of the Adirondack lumber-camp generation—who’d invited me into his home for an oral-history project. But it was a question that had been on my mind for years: “What about prostitutes?”
He took the question in stride. Sure, there was a house at the end of the road into camp where a fellow could go for a beer or other entertainments. And when the crew headed into St. Regis Falls with their pay each spring, they knew where to go to get whatever they wanted. Not that he had any firsthand knowledge, mind you.
Though it plays a prominent role in Wild West mythology, the oldest profession is mostly missing from our regional memory, a disregarded trade that flourished alongside industry and tourism. My first introduction to a North Country fille de joie was Florence Hilton, described by 19th-century Plattsburgh newspapers as being “much in evidence about the garrison.” It was a euphemism that stuck with me, a whisper of stories hiding in the shadow of the garrison, the lumber camp, the high-end resort.
How prevalent was prostitution in the Adirondacks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? It’s impossible to know for sure. First-person accounts aren’t available, though some tales have been passed through the generations. Hilary “Guy” LeBlanc, a caretaker of Long
