Sadie Orchard (1860-1943)

Historical marker location:

NM Highway 152, Hillsboro, New Mexico

( southeast corner of NM Highway 152 and NM Highway 27)

Arriving in the silver mining boomtown of Kingston in 1886, Sadie Jane Creech Orchard is arguably the most colorful woman in New Mexico history. Sadie opened brothels, worked as a prostitute, built and operated hotels and restaurants, and co-owned and drove for a regional stagecoach line. During World War I she tended to the less fortunate, and in the 1918 flu pandemic nursed children and cared for the sick and dying. New Mexico writer Erna Fergusson wrote of her, “For a bad woman, Sadie was one of the best.”.