From the archives of the Old West, we’ve culled a list of the most notorious places on the frontier. Here’s our countdown of the baddest of the bad, meanest of the mean, Wild West towns.

Some historians say that the Wild West wasn’t as dangerous as we’ve been led to believe by Hollywood, but there’s no doubt that some frontier towns were beyond the immediate reach of the law -places where mischief, mayhem, and murder were everyday occurrences.

8. FORT GRIFFIN, TEXAS

One of the wildest places in the old West, Fort Griffin sprouted at the intersection of the West Fork of the Trinity River and the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in northern Texas. Built in the 1860s on a hill overlooking the Brazos, the fort itself was designed to protect the folks -mostly farmers and ranchers- who lived below in the settlement of Fort Griffin.

The town was soon invaded by outlaws and cowboys driving their cattle north to Dodge City. By the 1870s, skirmishes with the Kiowa and Comanche in the north diverted the soldiers from Fort Griffin and, as a result, law enforcement broke down, which attracted even more rough types to the town.

Visiting Celebrities. The motley collection of buffalo hunters, gamblers, gunfighters, and “painted ladies” brought with them a penchant for violence. Among them were a gambler and prostitute named Big Nose Kate and her pal, the legendary gambler Doc Holliday. Also passing through were Wyatt Earp (who met Holliday for the first time at the fort), lawman Pat Garrett, and John Wesley Hardin -by some accounts the most sadistic killer to ever come out of Texas. Dustups and gun violence became so frequent that the commander of the fort finally placed the town under martial law in 1874.

7. RUBY, ARIZONA

From the days of the Spanish explorations prospectors had searched for veins of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc near Montana Peak in southern Arizona close to the Mexican border. In 1891, high-grade gold was discovered. A local assayer judged it to be a bonanza, and the rush was on. The town of Ruby was born practically overnight.

Here Comes Trouble. Most of the miners lived in tents or rough adobe huts, and bought their meager supplies at George Cheney’s Ruby Mercantile, the one and only general store. The men provided for themselves and their families by hunting and rustling cattle. But the primary source of trouble came from Mexican bandits who frequently terrorized the settlement. By the early 1900s, Ruby was so dangerous that Philip and Gypsy Clarke, who owned a general store, kept weapons in every room of their house as well as the general store. When Philip eventually sold the store to a pair of brothers, he warned them of the danger. They didn’t heed Clarke’s warning and were soon found shot to death. Today, Ruby is a well-preserved ghost town.

6. DELAMAR, NEVADA

Delamar got its reputation as a notorious Wild West town not from gun violence but from dangerous conditions in the mines. The 1889 discovery of gold in nearby Monkey Wrench Gulch unleashed a stampede of miners intent on digging for the peculiar form of gold, encased as it was in crystallized quartz. A former ship’s captain named Joseph Raphael De Lamar bought most of the profitable mines in 1893 and built a mill to crack the quartz and refine the gold. Within a few years, the town had 1,500 citizens, a hospital, post office, opera house, school, several churches, and plenty of saloons. But then the deaths began to mount.

Dust to Dust. Operations at the mill exposed the miners -and the town- to clouds of silicon dust. The mill workers were at the greatest risk of breathing in the dust, which slowly caused silicosis of the lungs and death. At one time, 400 widows lived in Delamar, giving the town its reputation as the “Widowmaker.” Delamar began its decline in 1909 when Captain De Lamar tore down the mill. Operation started up in the mines two decades later, but eventually slowed to a halt. The last resident moved away in 1934.

5. DODGE CITY, KANSAS

Fights and gunplay were all too familiar in Dodge City in the 1870s. In its first ten years, it became a well-known gathering hole for gunslingers -so well known that companies such as the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad came to Dodge to hire fighting men when they needed to protect their business interests. Fearless buffalo hunters, cowboys, muleteers, and

Bat Masterson

bullwhackers (wagon train drivers) populated the city. Characters with colorful nicknames arrived, among them Cherokee Bill, Prairie Dog Dave, Fat Jack, and Cockeyed Frank. Said one resident, “With a few drinks of red liquor under their belts, you could reckon there was something doing. They feared neither God, man, nor the devil, and so reckless they would pit themselves, like Ajax, against lightning, if they ran into it.”

The Upside to the Downside. There were plenty of deaths and gunfights in the streets of “Wicked Dodge,” as writers termed it, but it could have been worse. Because so many inhabitants were known as “sluggers, bruisers, and dead shots,” most of them were wary of starting trouble with one another. Also happening on the scene were legendary lawmen such as Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Charlie Bassett, and Bill Tilghman, who stood ready to step in and jail anyone who got out of hand.

4. ELDORADO CANYON, NEVADA

Spanish explorers in the 18th century gave Eldorado Canyon its name, but it was American gold miners a century later who gave the mining camp at the canyon its reputation. The miners were drawn to a gorge on the Colorado River after prospectors discovered a vertical vein of gold there in 1861. The established the Techatticup Mine, which eventually fell into the hands of California senator George Hearst (father of publisher William Randolph Hearst). Eventually, dozens of mines in Eldorado Canyon became a magnet for prospectors, entrepreneurs, Civil War deserters, and “sporting women.” Their only connection to the outside world was a steamboat that carried the gold, silver, copper, and lead down the Colorado River to distant Yuma, Arizona.

The Original Fight Club. Political clashes among supporters of the North or South in the Civil War and greed, vigilante justice, and disputes over claims made for frequent brawls, stabbings, and gunfights. Killings became so common they were nearly a daily event. And the canyon was so remote -300 miles from the closest civilized town- that lawmen simply refused to enter it. A military post was eventually established near the settlement in 1867 to protect the steamboats and bring a sense of civility to the neighborhood.

3. DEADWOOD, SOUTH DAKOTA

Like many other famous Wild West towns, Deadwood owes its reputation for violence to the discovery of gold. In 1874, U.S. Army general George A Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills to confirm the existence of gold. The U.S. government tried to keep the gold a secret in honor of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which recognized the Black Hills as belonging to the Lakota-Sioux. But in1875, when a miner found gold in a narrow canyon lined with dead trees, the news of the find in “Deadwood Gulch” spread like wildfire. Within a year, miners stormed into the area and established the rough-and-tumble mining camp of Deadwood.

Deadwood Comes to Life. The Black Hills gold rush was in full bloom by 1876. Deadwood swarmed with men determined to get rich by any means. Dozens of saloons, gambling parlors, and brothels competed for their attention and dollars. Legendary characters Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were town fixtures. But danger lurked everywhere. Henry W. Smith, a Methodist minister, was murdered while walking to church, and Hickok was shot in the back of the head while playing poker in one of the saloons. By 1879, the rowdy nature of Deadwood began to ebb after a town government was established. Today, the well-preserved city is a gambling destination for tourists as well as a National Historic Landmark.

2. TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA

Many consider Tombstone the most dangerous of all the Wild West towns because of its lawlessness and frequent gunfights. The named seemed appropriate enough, but it wasn’t derived from the Boothill graveyard outside town -it came from a nearby mine named by prospector Ed Schieffelin, who filed the claim in 1877. He was told by a soldier that warring Apaches controlled the area. “All you’ll find in those hills is your tombstone,” said the soldier. But Schieffelin was undeterred and named his mine the Tombstone. News of the strike brought other miners to the site, and the town of Tombstone soon came into being.

Lovely Downtown Tombstone. Consisting of 40 buildings, a post office, and 500 residents by 1878, Tombstone began to draw the usual collection of men and women from the fringes of society.

Big Nose Kate

Within a few years, the town boasted more gambling parlors and saloons than anywhere in the Southwest, as well as the largest red light district. Wyatt Earp arrived at the end of 1879 with the intentions of establishing a stage line but instead invested in a gaming parlor while riding shotgun for Wells Fargo stagecoaches. Four of his brothers followed: James opened a saloon, and Warren, Virgil, and Morgan went into law enforcement. Wyatt’s friend Doc Holliday arrived in 1880 with Big Nose Kate, who established a brothel in a tent. The Clanton gang and the McLowrey brothers terrorized the countryside, running afoul of the Earps, which led to the showdown at the town’s O.K. Corral, thus sealing Tombstone’s legend. The city has survived into the 21s century, as has its newspaper, the Tombstone Epitaph, which memorialized Tombstone as “The Town Too Tough to Die.”

1. CANYON DIABLO, ARIZONA

Nowhere in the Southwest was there a more violent place than the railroad town of Canyon Diablo, giving it the top spot on our list of the meanest Wild West towns. The settlement was born when workers laying tracks for a railroad came to the edge of the canyon, with no  way to cross over until a bridge was built. Constructing the bridge took ten years, during which time the town that came into being took its name from the canyon. It was as despicable a place to live as there was in the West. With the closest U.S. marshal 100 miles away, Canyon Diablo quickly attracted drifters, gamblers, and outlaws. Fourteen saloons, ten gambling parlors, four brothels, two dance halls, a couple of cafes, a grocery, and a dry good store did business 24 hours a day. The buildings faced each other across the aptly-named Hell Street, the town’s single rocky road just off the railroad right-of-way.

They Shot the Sheriff. Fights and gun duels were frequent among the town’s 2,000 residents, filling dozens of graves at the town’s cemetery. Bandits regularly held up the stage that ran between Flagstaff and Canyon Diablo. When mounting violence persuaded the townspeople to hire a police officer, the first one put on his badge at three o’clock in the afternoon and was dead by eight o’clock that evening. Five more who tried it lasted a month or less before being slain. But what the law couldn’t do, the completion of the bridge accomplished. The town died, and according to Western lore, completely disappeared by 1899 when its last resident, a trading post owner named Herman Wolfe, died peacefully.

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader History’s Lists.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

We’ve all heard of underground societies, but rarely is the term used in such a literal manner as these amazing underground cities featured on Dornob.

Cities, empires and religions have risen and fallen around these unique underground havens once used by early Christians to hide from Roman armies, yet they remains occupied to this day – 100 square miles with 200+ underground villages and tunnel towns complete with hidden passages, secret rooms and ancient temples and a remarkably storied history of each new civilization building on the work of the last.

Read more about these amazing homes and enjoy the stunning pictures at the link.

Link

So what is so important about Pioneer Square and why should anyone outside of the city care? Read on, my friends, read on.

The First Settlements

In 1851, a troupe of pioneers known as the Denny Party established the first white settlement in the area at Alki Point. The group was led by Arthur A Denny, who soon realized that Alki Point wasn’t a good place for a settlement and then moved his party to a tide flat off of Elliot Bay, which they named Duwamps, after the local Native American tribe.

Within the first few years of settlement, another leader, Doctor David Swinson Maynard moved in from Cleveland. Whereas the members of the Denny Party were dedicated teetotalism Methodists, Doc Maynard was a heavy drinker who believed vice was one of the most effective industries in a frontier town.  Maynard convinced the other townspeople to rename the city Seattle after the Duwamps Chief Seattle, who was a friend of his. He did so not only to help honor his friend, but also because he knew Seattle would be a lot easier to promote to people back East than Duwamps, which sounded like a swamp.

In 1852, Maynard built his cabin, and contained a store inside of it, establishing the first shop in Seattle. He soon obtained the right to host a post office in his store, meaning everyone had to visit his store to get their mail. Throughout his life, Maynard helped build a number of important establishments in Seattle, building the first pharmacy, hotel, casino, saloon, brothel and hospital in the area.

When plots of land were officially established, Denny’s property stretched north of Pioneer Square, while Maynard’s extended to the south. Because each established their streets according to their piece of shoreline, the streets now have an awkward bend at what is now Yesler Way and that area of town is noticeably jumbled when it comes to driving.

Maynard helped jump start the city’s industry by offering his land at exceptionally cheap prices, provided the buyer started building a business on it immediately. He attracted critical business professionals such as blacksmiths into town, along with purveyors of vice, which helped attract more frontiersmen to the city. Early real estate records show that 90% of the city’s first businesses were built on Maynard’s land or immediately adjacent to his plot.

Left Out of The History Books

While Maynard obviously did a lot to help establish the town, he was left out of history books and almost completely forgotten about until Bill Speidel’s research helped bring his contributions to light. So why would such a key figure in the town’s founding be forgotten? Mostly because he was seen to be amoral.

When Maynard left Cleveland in 1850, he was married to a woman named Lydia. She eventually filed for divorce on grounds of desertion, but she never completed the divorce. Before arriving in Seattle, the good doctor circulated amongst several wagon trains, helping to fight cholera. While serving as the leader on a small wagon train that brought him to Puget Sound, he fell in love with a widow, Catherine Troutman Broshears. At first, her brother refused her permission to remarry, but after Maynard made a good deal of money in Seattle, he relented and the couple was married.

Years latter, Maynard’s first wife sold off her share of property and the man who purchased it then went after Maynard, claiming he was owed everything that was Lydia’s since the couple was never officially divorced. Lydia came to Seattle to help defend her husband and Catherine and the doctor became friends with her and let her live in their home. According to Speidel, Doc Maynard was the only resident that was commonly seen with one wife on each arm.

Aside from his adulteress nature, Maynard was also known to be a serious drunkard and prominently supportive of businesses dealing with vice, including saloons, casinos and brothels.

An Environmental Disaster

Seattle was established as a logging town. The area it was built on was covered with 1000-2000 year old trees that stood as high as 400 feet tall. Naturally for a logging industry with this much potential, a sawmill was necessary to process the wood, so when Henry Yesler moved from Ohio with a $30,000 loan to establish a sawmill, Maynard and Denny both donated land to him. The land was just west of Pioneer Square, in between the two properties and right on the waterway.

The mill was all set to make a fortune as Seattle was poised to be the main lumber supplier for San Francisco, which had a constant need for building supplies. Interestingly, Yesler made more money from real estate than he did from his mill and quickly became the city’s first millionaire.

The sawmill was at the bottom of the hill, so trees were harvested and then rolled down the street to the mill, which inspired the name “skid road.” When the area became dilapidated in the twentieth century, it led to the adaptation of the term “skid row” to describe a scummy part of town.

Yesler’s steam-powered saw mill had ample sawdust, which ended up coming in handy as the mud-ridden streets of the tide flats required something to help fill in the constant potholes. So, Yesler donated his mill’s waste to the streets. Of course, the rotting wood surrounded in mud wasn’t entirely effective and the early stories of San Francisco describe a number of horses and dogs sinking into the mud up to their necks and at least one person being killed in the mud, which sometimes sank like quicksand.

Aside from sawdust, Yesler also donated wood to help the city create its first sewage systems. Their first attempt consisted of a v-shaped trough above ground, which stank and leaked into the streets. This was soon replaced with an underground system that used hollowed-out logs. Unfortunately, because the pipes went directly into the sound, the high tide sent the sewage right back up, so everyone was advised to avoid flushing at high tide or risk a fountain shooting from their toilet.

The Trouble With A Lumber Town

Given how much timber was readily available in the area, it’s not entirely surprising that the majority of the city’s buildings were made from wood. Because the city was built on a tide flat, many of them were even built on wooden stilts. Add a ton of wooden buildings, wooden water pipes and sawdust shavings lining the streets, it’s easy to see how much of a fire trap the city was.

Unsurprisingly, when a cabinet maker accidentally started a glue fire in 1889, it spread quickly throughout the town. In the end, somewhere between 25 and 29 blocks were completely destroyed, including the city’s entire business district, four of the wharfs, and the city’s railroad terminals. Luckily, no one was killed in the massive blaze.

The Great Rebuilding

Bill Speidel often joked that the fire was known as the “Great Seattle fire” because it allowed the city to rebuild in a way that would get rid of all of their terrible problems. They could install real underground plumbing that wouldn’t shoot back in the pipes during high tide, they could regrade the streets so the high tide wouldn’t flood buildings and streets. To prevent future fire hazards, an ordinance required that all businesses downtown be made from brick and stone.

Unfortunately, the city renovation caused a conflict between the business owners, who wanted to reopen as soon as possible, and the city, who wanted to regrade the streets, which would take years. A compromise was soon reached, allowing the businesses to rebuild immediately on the tide flats as the city would regrade the streets. This meant the city would install massive retaining walls around the sidewalks and ladders could be used to climb from the elevated streets into the city’s underground sidewalks and into the store entrances.

Eventually, the sidewalks were built over the underground area, connecting the second or third stories of the buildings to the street-level. Interestingly, the fire also led to an economic boom, as construction workers rushed to the city to help rebuild businesses and streets alike.

By the time of Speidel’s Underground Tour, most people in the city thought the underground was just a rumor, but once the tour opened up, residents and visitors alike were amazed to discover the city’s fascinating buried history.

The story of Seattle’s founding isn’t just interesting for the tales of corruption and entrepreneurship, it also serves as a perfect example of how history can be reshaped as it is retold. Without Speidel’s research, Maynard and the city’s underground would likely still be lost to history. Who knows how many other cities have similar tales hiding just below the surface of the sparkly clean stories in history books?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, Seattle PI, History Link #1, #2, UWSP and Underground Tour

This quaint English village, housing 10,000 people, is just 20 miles outside the center of Shanghai, and a new rail system puts it just 15 minutes from downtown, as part of a rapidly expanding Greater Shanghai. Thames Town was designed to look exactly like a bucolic English town, complete with red brick buildings, a sandstone church, a village green, a market square, and a pub. But it’s not a theme park – developers insist it’s a real residential community.

Link -via the Presurfer

The US has its share of strange town names. If you’ve made a few road trips, you’ve no doubt encountered some of them. Test your knowledge of these strangely-named cities in this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss. I scored 67%. Note: be sure to read the questions carefully! Link

This small town got its name from an incident in which a store owner cheated a postal worker by charging him an extra fifty cents for a better watermelon. Certainly they are much more hospitable these days, though it appears they all are still pretty tight with their money: none of the families counted in the 2006 census were living below the poverty line. And most of them keep their money in the Tightwad Bank.

Read about twenty other strangely-named places and the stories behind them. Link -via J-Walk Blog