Tumbleweed Underworld: A Saga of Morphine and Mayhem in the Arizona Territory

by Eduardo Obregón Pagán

Georgie Clifford appears briefly in the annals of American history as an 1894 inmate of the Yuma Territorial Prison, one of two female prisoners among hundreds of hardened, violent men. A denizen of an Old West underworld of prostitution and narcotics, she had been convicted of murder for giving a lethal dose of morphine to a client. Telling Georgie's story in Tumbleweed Underworld, Eduardo Obregón Pagán exposes a dark underside of the turn-of-the-century American West, where attorneys, soldiers, doctors, miners, well-off women, and Chinese immigrants were caught up in the country's first opioid epidemic.

Georgie Clifford began life as Minnie Eichler in the small mining town of Clifton, Arizona Territory. After being raped by her mother's boyfriend and testifying in the subsequent trial, Minnie fled Clifton, taking with her a taste for the morphine given her for her trauma. Tumbleweed Underworld follows Minnie through brothels, mining camps, and logging towns, through shifting personas and deeper dependency, to the trial in Flagstaff, Arizona that ultimately landed her in prison. The story continues after her release and sees Georgie descend into a true addiction hell—in and out of jail cells, cribs, ditches, and the state asylum—before finally recovering and finding a measure of redemption in reconnecting with her family.

This moving tale of a young woman's years-long struggle with trauma and addiction puts a human face on the nexus of unrestricted opiates, sex trafficking, addiction, and the lack of effective treatment in the Old West. It also gives substance to the global story of opium and its derivatives, the beginnings of the pharmaceutical industry, the rehabilitation efforts of reformers, and the nascent government attempts to control both drugs and sex in the early twentieth century.
 

256 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication February 24, 2026

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC

I'd like to thank Longleaf Services and Edelweiss+ for the opportunity to give "Tumbleweed Underworld" an early read in return for an honest review.

When one thinks of the stereotypical "Wild West", many will think of cowboys, towns in the middle of nowhere, and saloons, with lots, and lots, of available women. There's a glamour that we have about the history of westward expansion, romanticizing many aspects to feed into what we want to think the time period was like. One doesn't tend to associate the west with opium usage, and that's what Obregón Pagán discusses within "Tumbleweed Underworld". Examining the crossing of sex work and opium usage, Obregón Pagán opens up an intriguing discussion, filled with anecdotes and facts that are pretty eye-opening. The focus of this book is specifically within the Arizona Territory, though usage of opium within sex work certainly went far from the borders of the territory. With this book only focusing on one specific area, we get a good overview of that one area, but I would have liked to have expanded a bit into other areas, rather than focus on just one. The same goes for the story of Georgie Clifford, where primarily focusing on her story left me wanting a bit more stories to get a more well-rounded picture. That being said, I found this to be an interesting read, which went by surprisingly quickly, due to Obregón Pagán's smooth writing. This is a pretty niche topic, so I know that it won't be a hit on the bookshelves for the general public, but for those with an interest in western history, it's certainly worth the read.

Be sure to give "Tumbleweed Underworld" a read when it is published on February 24, 2026.