Husbands' Alley

Jerome's mining wages fed a red-light district along Hull Avenue, the road that runs below Main Street. When reformers pushed through an ordinance in 1913 to drive the houses from downtown, townspeople answered with a joke that stuck, naming the connecting passage from Main Street down to Hull Avenue Husbands' Alley, after the men who slipped down it. The district's buildings included a row of cribs, long since gone, and the women's jail that still occupies the bottom floor of the New State Motor building, small monuments to the vice that boom towns ran on.

What the plaque says

With Jerome's rough and tumble early days came the red-light district. Much of it was located on Hull Avenue, the road below Main Street. In 1913, reformers helped pass an ordinance restricting houses of ill fame from downtown. Citizens showed their disdain for the law by naming the alleyway from Main Street to Hull Avenue Husbands' Alley. Red-light district buildings on Hull Avenue included the Cribs, a brick structure that no longer exists. The ladies' jail still stands on Hull Avenue in the bottom floor of the New State Motor building.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jerome — 0.2 mi
  The billion-dollar copper camp clinging to Cleopatra Hill — now the largest ghost town in America
• Tuzigoot — 5.2 mi
  A hilltop Sinagua pueblo over the Verde, dug out of the ground in the Depression
• Montezuma Castle — 19 mi
  A five-story Sinagua cliff dwelling, misnamed for an emperor who was never here
• Sedona — 22 mi
  Red-rock skyline, Little Hollywood, and the town Sedona Schnebly gave her name to

More markers nearby

• Bartlett Hotel — steps away
• Jerome Blast Furnace — steps away
• Jerome's Famous Sliding Jail — steps away
• The Audrey Shaft and UVX Operations — 0.3 mi