The legend of the Chicken Ranch
Charles Landriault
The Signal
Edna Milton Chadwell died Feb. 25 from injuries sustained in an auto accident that occurred a few months earlier in October 2011. Her death marks the end of one of the most celebrated scandals in Texas history…or does it?
Chadwell was known as the last madam of the “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” Infamously nicknamed “The Chicken Ranch,” the brothel gained notoriety as the oldest, continuously run whorehouse in the nation after a 1973 exposé by Marvin Zindler, reporter for KTRK-TV in Houston, closed the bordello permanently.
The legend of the Chicken Ranch inspired a Broadway play, a movie starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds based on the play and a hit song by ZZ Top.
“Rumour spreadin’ ‘round in that Texas town, ‘bout that shack outside La Grange and you know what I’m talkin’ about. Just let me know if you wanna go to that home out on the range. They gotta lotta nice girls. Have mercy. A haw, haw, haw, haw, a haw.”
-La Grange by ZZ Top
The legend of the Chicken Ranch seems to be surrounded by rumors, many of which are to the dismay of the citizens of La Grange. The first falsity is how long the Chicken Ranch was actually around.
The bordello was reported to have begun in 1844, yet the original deed, in the name of Jessie Williams (born Faye Stewart, the original madam), shows that the land where the Chicken Ranch stood was purchased in 1917. Edna Chadwell or Miss Edna as she was more commonly referred to, joined the staff of the Chicken Ranch in 1952 and purchased the Ranch from Williams in 1961 due to Williams’ failing health.
Even the rumor of how the brothel got its name, the Chicken Ranch, is false. Legend reports that Edna’s Fashionable Ranch Boarding House earned the nickname “Chicken Ranch” during the Great Depression when gentleman began paying with chickens for the services being offered there.
Miss Edna herself set the record straight in a July 30, 2007 telephone interview with Kathy Carter, then director of the Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives.
“Jessie was afraid a new grand jury might try and investigate so she bought 100 baby chicks and called the place a poultry farm,” Miss Edna said. “By the time I got there in 1952, all the chickens were gone.”
The play and movie have the madam living at the brothel with her girls. Miss Edna did not live at the Chicken Ranch. In her telephone interview, she told Carter that the Ranch was her job and she would come and go on a daily basis.
“No, I always had my own home away from the Ranch,” Miss Edna said. “The Ranch was my job, and I went home when I wasn’t on duty.”
The Chicken Ranch hosted customers from all walks of life such as farmers, businessmen and politicians, but Donna Green, archivist/curator of the Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives said the Ranch made its money more from local patrons than from outside the city limits.
“One of the popular rumors is that the military would fly people here on a helicopter and Mr. V.A. Hrbacek would pick them up from the airport and deliver them to the Chicken Ranch in his cow trailer,” said Green. “Afterwards, he would take them to his restaurant to eat and then back to the airport. This rumor is not true.”
Buried deep in Aggie lore is the legend of freshmen from Texas A&M University being sent to the Chicken Ranch as part of their initiation or as a right of passage. This, as far as Green knows, is also untrue. The portrayal, in the play and movie, of Aggies being present when the Chicken Ranch was “raided” by Zindler’s television crew is not true.
“They may have gone there, but no more than anyone else,” Green said. “There was more local business than there was Aggies and Longhorns.”
Sheriff T.J. Fluornoy, or Sheriff Jim as he was known locally was sheriff of La Grange at the time and was reported to have had a relationship or “understanding” with Miss Edna. This was also untrue.
“Sheriff Jim and Miss Edna did not have a relationship,” Green said. “The woman was married four times. The first time against her will. She was not very fond of the male gender as a whole.”
As to the rumor of a “hotline” being installed at the Chicken Ranch by Sheriff Jim so that Miss Edna could call if there were any problems or if any criminals showed up, well, this one has not been confirmed or denied, but Green doubts its validity.
“This story is not true as far as I know,” Green said. “There was no reason for such a thing. The Chicken Ranch was outside of the city limits down a dirt road. The rumor is that he had the phone line installed to warn her when they were about to be raided. But virtually no one cared about the place around here. There was no reason to raid it. Sure, prostitution was illegal, but so was selling beer to minors, and he didn’t have a phone installed in every beer joint to warn those people.”
Items such as decorations, photographs and fancy furniture claiming to be authentic from inside the Chicken Ranch are being sold on Ebay or other sources. These items are almost certainly fake. In fact, the Chicken Ranch was not a “fancy” place or extravagantly decorated.
“The Chicken Ranch was not a fancy place at all,” Green said. “It was not highly decorated or anything of the sort. There are people selling brass tokens that they say were accepted as payment at the Chicken Ranch; this is also untrue.” Miss Edna confirmed these facts in her telephone interview with Carter.
There are many inconsistencies regarding the history of the Chicken Ranch, but buried deep within are some truths that did make their way to the foreground of the story. For example, Miss Edna really did have a list of rules to which the girls had to abide that included no drinking while on duty, no tattoos and mandatory weekly visits to the doctor.
“The girls went to the doctor every week for an exam,” said Aileen Loehr, reporter with The Fayette County Record. “The madam did not want any transmitted diseases. I saw them come to Dyer’s Pharmacy to purchase makeup and perfume. They were always nicely dressed and never had a suntan. They sort of stuck out if you know what I mean.”
Loehr remembered a funny story about the owner of a local furniture store who drove around with a rocking chair tied on to the back of his truck.
“One day we had gone into his store to buy furniture and he came through and told the clerk that he was going to deliver the rocking chair on the truck,” Loehr said. “He delivered that same chair so many times it got to be the joke of the town. We always knew when he was going to the ‘ranch’ because he would head out Hwy. 71E and if you watched him or followed him, he always delivered that same chair there.”
After Zindler broke the story of the Chicken Ranch’s existence to the world, he returned to La Grange and was seen in front of a local barbershop. Zindler’s return to the small town sparked an infamous showdown between he and Sheriff Jim, which made local and national headlines.
“Fluornoy got right in Zindler’s face and knocked off his hair piece which fell to the street,” Loehr said. “The street was a bit messy as it had rained during the night before. Well, in trying to get out of there, Zindler’s car drove over the hair piece and Zindler stopped the driver and tried to get out and pick up the hair piece. How he got it back I don’t recall. But it was not on the street because we [girls] went for coffee down the street and it was not there when we went by.”
Miss Edna was philanthropic with the money brought in by the Chicken Ranch. The Fayette County Record reported Aug. 7, 1973, that she contributed $8,000 to the building fund for Fayette Memorial Hospital and $1,000 for the city swimming pool, although she was never formally recognized for her charitable donations.
Forty years have passed since the doors of the then scandalous brothel were closed permanently in 1973. Very little of the actual building still stands; but its existence still plagues the town and people of La Grange. Shortly after the Chicken Ranch was shut down, the Fayette County Record ran an editorial summarizing the town’s stance on the bordello’s demise.
“But the fact is that, however fashionable, however philanthropic, a whorehouse is still a whorehouse,” the editorial stated. “And when your town becomes known from coast to coast for that one thing, the long-range results are scarcely beneficial. When it comes to be joked about on national television…well, it takes a perverted mind indeed to go on saying how good this is for La Grange.”
Since its closure, the people from La Grange have attempted to put the legend of the Chicken Ranch in their rearview yet, to their dismay, they continue to be met with heckling and teasing because of where they live. To this day the tawdry history of the brothel’s past existence tarnishes the memories of the townspeople of La Grange.
“I don’t like it,” Green said. “There is so much wonderful history here and 99 percent of the people who come here want to see the Chicken Ranch house. That’s all they care about and there is so much more to the town than that.”
