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Sunnycrest, the Story of the Cheyenne Cañon Inn

convenient walking distance to the house where there was often an excellent
view of the goods offered. It would have been easy to ogle at any of the highclass
hookers that might be languishing for a customer on the second story
balcony. The balcony has since been closed in to enlarge existing rooms and
create the hot tub spa.

Operating a bordello was a risky business. Even though there was promising
opportunity to make more money than a high-class resort house would generate,
one's reputation and the likelihood of going to jail and losing everything needed
to be considered. Lillian solved this dilemma by leasing the business to outsiders
in return for a good income and the promise of turning a blind eye. The
Sunnycrest bordello operated only during the summer tourist season, and
returned to being a somewhat normal home during the winter. Some of the
cottages located directly east of the building were used to house the lineup of
working girls, while the cottage now called "Petite Maison" was the madam's
residence. Presumably, Lillian, her husband, and any siblings she cared for also
lived close by.

The surrounding neighborhood probably knew what was going on but kept quiet.
One young boy who lived on Oak Way was quite naive, however. Many years
later when he visited Sunnycrest after its conversion to the Cheyenne Canyon
Inn, he had this to say about the beautiful ladies that lived up the street. "At the
time I thought Sunnycrest was being rented by a rich man who brought all his
pretty nieces to live with him during the summer. Those girls sure were pretty,
but it never occurred to me what was really going on and what the nieces really
were".

Another recollection comes from Sara Huffman Miller, who grew up at
Sunnycrest during the 1980's, and also wrote the first history of the house as an
eighth grade school project. The mother of one of her friends told Sara that each
prostitute had their own chauffeur. The mother and her other girl friends knew
about the prostitutes and what was going on. Even so, they were proper young
ladies who were attracted to the handsome chauffeurs that they dated.

For those clients who knew exactly what to expect, the Sunnycrest bordello
provided them with a discrete means for entering and leaving the premises. This
was especially useful for anyone arriving by trolley. A disembarking passenger
could pretend to be taking a walk up the road towards North Cheyenne Canyon
like any other tourist. However, if you knew about one particular path, it left the
tourist route to climb through the forest on the hillside below the bordello to a big
rock where a secret tunnel was located. From there, it was a short underground
walk through the tunnel to a door that opened into the basement in the southwest
corner of the house.

Signs of the old path through the forest are still faintly visible, although the tunnel
is now blocked at both ends. Hillside rubble has covered it at the big rock, and a

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