Before Sun City, El Paso was Sin City

In a January 2003 , column, El Paso historian Leon Metz wrote about El Paso's early days as " Sin City. " Metz wrote that in 1902 there were an estimated 600 residents and 96 saloons.

As for Cy Ryan mentioned in this column, I found a September 1902 article reporting his return to El Paso from a summer vacation that took him back East , then a March 1903 article that lamented his death and the lack of a Saint Patrick's Day parade that year.

More: 1883: News from around El Paso in the Lone Star Locals

Before Sun City, El Paso was Sin City

Across the centuries, El Paso has been known by several names and descriptions, but perhaps one of the best-known tags long ago was "Sin City."

You don't hear that expression too much anymore. The town has been settled and tamed. Where we now have churches, businesses, schools, and miles of quiet residential areas, we once had saloons, brothels, gamblers, shady ladies, and gunmen, the list of sin and sinners being almost as endless as it was colorful.

Editor Simeon Newman of the El Paso Lone Star newspaper, who considered himself a guardian of local and public morals, registered shock in 1883 at what he regarded as a display of foul language, the participants being men and women sitting in a carriage in front of the local post office.

W.W. Bridgers , a prominent El Pasoan who wrote about many topics, noted that "these were the days (1881) when gamblers sported heavy gold-linked watch chains and diamond shirt studs. Charlie Utter — he golden-haired gambler of the Rockies — wore a watch chain a foot long and as thick as your little finger. He favored a vest and a dazzling shirt front bedecked with glittering studs. When encountered on the street, one usually found him dressed in a Prince Albert coat, and a $50 broad-brimmed white Stetson. His boots contained the finest leather."

Most gamblers were transients. In 1902 an estimated 600 lived here, most of them making a living in 96 saloons.

But none of them, in terms of style, could touch Cy Ryan, the most colorful, flamboyant gambler ever to hit El Paso. Ryan opened the Mint Saloon at 207 S. El Paso Street, old timers remembering the location as the Alhambra Theater and later the Palace Theater.

Then Ryan went big time, opening the Astor House Saloon and Gambling Emporium at 107 San Antonio.

The gambling house ran wide open 24 hours a day. Celebrities passing through always made a point to stop in. Famed gunman and sports writer Bat Masterson spent time there, as did former world heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan .

Loud in every sense, Ryan wore "expressive" raiment topped off with a silk stovepipe hat. When he spoke, the whole town heard him, and when he went to church, he dropped only coins in the collection box because they made such an impressive, noticeable clatter.

Every morning he threw open the doors of his saloon, tossing handfuls of coins into the street, where boys would scramble for them.

More: 'Oddities In The El Paso News,' a look at border life in 1922: Trish Long

Once each week, Pomroy Stables sent its finest hack to the Astor House, the horses shining and prancing, the driver dressed like a wealthy cab driver. Ryan's servants then trotted out with sugar, coffee, flour, meat, corn and whatever.

With Ryan looking like a European count, silk top hat never slipping, and with a crack of the whip, he and the coachman rumbled off in their chariot to distribute food to the poor in South El Paso.

The Astor House gambling emporium is gone, in its place a rather quiet parking lot alongside Pioneer Plaza, across the street from the Camino Real Hotel (now the Hotel Paso del Norte ). Shoppers, businessmen, tourists and politicians stroll by with scarcely a thought to the showy events that once occurred there.

As for whatever happened to the colorful, high-stepping Cy Ryan, I have not the vaguest idea, but he brought a sense of style that's sorely needed today.

Trish Long may be reached at tlong@elpasotimes.com or 915-546-6179.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Before Sun City, El Paso was Sin City