"Wild West Towns" Topic

Having originally come from the 'Wild West' (Glasgow) I've always been fascinated with Westerns.

Poll suggestion:

Which was the wildest of the old Wild West towns?

1. Dodge City

2. Deadwood

3. Tombstone

Dodge City – Tombstone earned the rep mainly from the OK Corral, but Dodge City had it going on all the time.

Yup, Dodge City was hell on earth before the Civil War. Took forever to settle down to tolerable levels of violence. Deadwood might run second but might I suggest:
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.

link

Agua Verde hands down! See for yourself:

YouTube link

Of course, there is also Rock Ridge. Even Governor Le Petomaine had a hand in there.

Dodge City had the cowboys whooping it up after a months long trail drive but Deadwood was on indian land with no law whatsoever.

Second for Canyon Diablo. One of the better train robberies happened there.

Fort Griffin, Texas; or Ruby Arizona…

I am renaming my western town… It was Dryrot Arizona… But I think the signs may need to be changed to Canyon Diablo…

The wear and tear on marshals was brutal!

I'd go with Deadwood as the 'worst of the lot' over Dodge City – maybe too much Hollywood influence on the ladder's reputation. Read up on those two and make up your own mind. But Deadwood was no variety of flat if you're looking to model it! Of course, that's part of why it inspires me – at one time I was planning on Rottenwood as my town name (and might still use it as a 'former' name for Anachronism).

Pallisades, NV.
link

capncarp, you may have just inspired something – but you'll have to wait a year or two to know just exactly what! ; )

Now that – thanks to Dead Man's Hand Down Under – Australia is officially part of the Wild West, I feel justified in renominating* a candidate from our Wild North: Borroloola in the Northern Territory.

In January 1886 government surveyor Walter Cuthbertson had this to say about it: 'The residents also complain of the government giving them no police protection, for these districts are at present the resort of all the scum of Northern Australia…'. 'There is a great amount of drunkenness carried on, men may be seen lying about the streets all day in various stages. Pugilistic encounters are almost daily occurrences…'

A businessman, Thomas Macansh, in a letter to the Government Resident said 'This town and district are in a state of terror for want of police protection. All the outlaws from Queensland seem to flock here, knowing there is no law to limit them from committing crimes. Horses are stolen, forgeries are committed, all kinds of robberies, all sorts of acts of violence, even a case of sodomy on a drunken man is reported….
The amount of drunkenness and rowdy behaviour is beyond description. Mr McGregor and I fear we will have a bad time of it getting our teams away with the station supplies. Some of our horses have been stolen already. We have no control of our men owing to the number of shanties. The drunken men are practicing with rifles every day about the town. The place is daily growing notorious…'

Macansh feared that if he performed his duties a justice of the peace 'his horses and even his life would not be safe'.

A visitor called it 'a regular Alsatia', and described how two stores had been robbed at gunpoint. When the owner of one flaunted a revolver at them 'the rowdies retreated out of pistol range and fired rifle balls into the store'. The storekeeper, Cameron, survived by taking cover behind an iron chest. He wrote to the Government Resident 'Property is not safe, and life is risky. The swindling, brutal, and unnatural crimes done in this place would not be credited'

When the town finally got a police presence in September 1886. Constable Donegan reported: 'This is a very large district and the resort of the most notorious horse- and cattle-stealers from the other colonies… The natives are very numerous and troublesome and have already killed men, horses, and cattle. It is unreasonable to think that two constables can cope with the blacks and whites of this district.'

But Borroloola was part of an ongoing social phenomenon: it was only the latest of a series of towns that degenerated as the 'scum' poured in having been successively pushed further out as law and order advanced in the wake of the frontier.

*I posted some of these quotes some years ago when the town got a mention in a thread way back then.

I missed a quote from a station manager, Isaac Little, from May 1885, to the effect that station hands coming from Queensland to work on properties in the NT included 'some very bad characters, who nearly all carry fire-arms, and it is a very common occurrence in the neighborhood for men to fire on one another'. He asserted that on the QLD side of the border the free employment of guns had resulted in a lot of woundings and three or four deaths.

Well, all of my houses are Adobes because I set it in a fictional town (For Western, Gothic Horror, 19th Century Superheroes, SF, VSF, and Other games) near the current border between New Mexico, USA, and Mexico. Most games occur before the Mexican-American War,

To Paraphrase: "You game with the buildings you bought…"

LAGO?

:)