We understand why Wyoming built a monument to a prostitute. They were grateful just to have one. The grave of Mother Featherlegs is on all the maps, but no one in Lusk knows how to get to it. On the old Cheyenne trail, it's a ten mile unpaved journey with 8-inch deep muddy furrows and ruts.
And there's not much of a payoff. No bawdy statuary or even a noble bas relief. Just a 3,500-pound pink granite slab, the worn inscription blocked by a metal pipe fence.
The inscription:
Her lies Mother Featherlegs. So called, as in her ruffled pantalettes she looked like
a feather-legged chicken in a high wind.
She was roadhouse ma'am.
An outlaw confederate, she was murdered by "Dangerous Dick Davis the Terrapin" in 1879.
Mother Featherlegs was called such because her ruffled leggings made her look like she had chicken legs. It's emblematic of the Christian Right vs. fun-loving Left that we hide our hooker heritage where it is terribly inconvenient to visit.
