"What Buildings Does Every Old West Town Need?" Topic

I'm dipping my toe into the Old West real estate market for the first time, and am curious what buildings everyone feels are necessary for a proper Old West town.

As a little background, I usually play in a large town that my buddy Rupert of Hentzau has accumulated. When my son picked up the cowboy bug, however, I decided to put together a small town for quick games at home. So I'd like to concentrate on buildings that will work for a small standalone town, but also able to do double-duty alongside my friends collection as needed.

So, what are the must-have buildings for a very small town (I'll start the list with the obvious)?

1) Saloon (every town needs at least one!)

undertaker's

General Store.

Some useful buildings. Each one should have a figure or a few figures to go with them – soiled doves at the Saloon/House of Negotiable Virtue, Sheriff and gimpy deputy for the Sheriff's office, etc.

2) Bank (for robbing, of course, or for foreclosing on the local farmers)
3) Sheriff's Office/Jail (for locking up the land-barons arrogant son, or for breaking out of)
4) Land Office (for burning the records of land grants and water rights)
5) Printers (So the land baron can send his goons to wreck it for writing bad things about him)
6) Telegraph Office (to send for help)
7) Train Station (Okay, not every town has a train station…)
8) Hotel/Restaurant (might be combined with the Saloon)
9) Some houses for people to live in
10) Hardware/drygoods store (might sell guns and explosives as well, or they might have their own store)
11) Outhouses (each building should have one!)
12) Stage/Post office (the stage usually carries the mail – at least packages if there is also a Pony Express station in town).
13) Undertaker's (for the aftermath)
14) Livery Stable (a large barn to hold horses to rent, or be used as a parking lot for the hero's horse) Might be combined with a Blacksmith, or the smith might have his own place.
15) Another Saloon (one is where the hero hangs out, the other is where the land-baron's hired guns hang out)
16) House of Negotiable Virtue (could be combined with a saloon/hotel)
17) Courthouse (if the town also happens to be the county seat)
18) Gallows (usually built for a special hangin', at least in the movies; seems like a lot of trouble for one use.)
19) Church (for the Sunday services, or for horrific crimes in the "House of God")
20) School (for the pretty new schollmarm, of course.)
21) Assayer (For Mining mining towns. An assayer determines the purity of the gold/silver)

number of suggestions here
link

If you go by the movies, a saloon. That's all.
Maybe a jail.

I selling 6-7 4ground old west buildings if your interested my email is rjdunn62@hotmail.com

Don't forget the Chinese Laundry

Many booming towns had a "suburbs" of tents on the outskirts of town.

Not a building, but a "Boot Hill" cemetery is a must & can be easily scratch-built.

Blacksmith

Boarding house. The Sheriff has to live somewhere while he's courting the Schoolmarm.
Gunsmith might be in order, too.

Outhouses.

Must have buildings for a very small town is your criteria. My small town would consist of the following:
1)Saloon (Where everyone knows your name and fights break out among the gunslingers and cow pokes)
2)Bank (for outlaws or indigenous south of the border types to make withdrawals from)
3) Sheriff's Office/Jail (so the gang can break their leader out, or lock up those causing trouble in the saloon). A gallows can be alongside it.
4) Livery Stable/cattle pens (a place where stampedes can start from and a reason for cow pokes to bring their cattle into town, or the stage to change horses)
5) Rail station (to load cattle, bring in the payroll, or a noon time arrival place for the x-con gunslinger with a grudge agin the sheriff)
6) General Store (a place for the ranchers/farmers to get harassed by the rich guy's hired gun for not selling out their water infringing homesteads)
7) 2-3 Houses for the town folk to live in or small businesses with living space in back or above. (the town needs NPC's to get in the way of impending gunfights, or for that man with no name to save)

then copious places to hide behind, like outhouses, crates, wagons water troughs and hitching posts.

Besides a town you may want to consider the mining camp -a hill with mine entrance or a stream, some tents and equipment for the miners to hide while fending off the claim jumpers

Howard Johnson's Ice Cream Parlor.

1 FLAVOR

To be a pedant, a county would only have one sheriff's office, as there was only one sheriff per county. The local town police were headed up by a marshall and his deputies. If a town did not have its own marshall, they would have to send for the sheriff if they needed the law.

There may be an assay office
Boarding House

Actually, there would be more than one bank (see the attempted simultaneous robbery of the banks in Coffeyville, Kansas).
There might well be a separate freight and passenger station for the railroad.
A barber shop.
A doctor (maybe a painless dentist, too)

Grelber

A Stables which might/might not include the town's blacksmith.

With two railroads coming to town, each with their own station, you can have a genuine railroad war over which one manages to extend it's line through the gorge and out of town.
link

Like I said, this is going to be a SMALL town. No more than a half dozen buildings, so there won't be two of anything…

Thanks for the suggestions all, and especially Buckeye Bob & Roderick Robertson! Lot's of great food for thought!

Saloon/Brothel/Hotel

Dentist Office.

Jail

Barber Shop

Stable and Corral

General store

Blacksmith

Assay Office

Undertaker

Lawyer Office

Houses

Courthouse

Mayor's office

Church

Stagecoach Office

Bank

Telegraph Office

Printer and Newspaper

Wish someone would come out with a 3 figure set of the same figure. Mounted, on foot, and dead for 28mm. Lots of 15mm out there.

What brand & type (paper, mdf, plastic) are your friend's models?

I'm a big fan of prepainted buildings. I paint slowly, so the less time I spend on buildings, the more I can spend on figures.

My friend has just about everything 4Ground makes, and I've picked up a couple so far. Am planning to modify them enough that they don't look like duplicates. The next additions I'm looking at are the one-story version of Rogan's Bar and the Hardware store. Not sure what kind of business I'd put in the store, though…

I'm also looking forward to the Tombstone releases Empires at War mentioned in their latest news item.

Knuckleduster Cowtown Creator may be of benefit. 200+ pages.

link

Ooh, that's good to know. I bet my buddy already has a copy of that…

Thanks!

Those looks good…!

From here
link

Armand

Old but pertinent topic as I am, after several years, rebuilding a fictitious mid-19th-C. western town that I can transplant anywhere between Yuma and Reno. The real difference being the flora and Fauna.

Like all wargame projects in 28mm, time, finance, scenario and space are my limiting factors, therefore I have come to the conclusion that my structures must be multi-purpose to fit the scenario (and my budget).

Under the theory that the sparsely populated west would not have all the amenities of the boroughs of New York, not every "community" is going to have a doctor, dentist, or even a lawman. Maybe a saloon/roadhouse and a wind-powered well. A town with rail service may be just a former pony-express station or telegraph relay station. You get what I'm saying, most probably. One's wild west town needs to have the buildings that support the objectives of the scenario.

With a little work signs can be swapped on MDF buildings to repurpose a structure to the scenario. I'm considering Velcro. The lists above certainly include most businesses and structures that are possible, but unless one has unlimited resources, time, and space, one doesn't need all at one time.

Certain structures are so commonplace and specialized that repurposing isn't likely, like a saloon or livery stable. The same is true for a two-building Chinese quarter, and similar Spanish quarter. But a boarding house doubles as a bordello, a hotel as a dance hall, and business structures as anything I need with a sign change. The mine is also single purpose with a hole in some foam, a couple of inches of HO track and a couple of mine cars in O scale, ACW tents added if it is not abandoned. I even plan a T-Rex for the valley of Gwangi and a Wendigo or two, but they fall under fauna.

I enjoy the American uniqueness of the genre; (I'm one of those nationalists who love things American). But to store what I need and still keep 28mm WII, pirates, ironclads and Napoleonic naval, I've had to limit my scope and scale. This is especially true with Wild West.

As usual for me, my post is a day late and a dollar short, but take it for what it's worth. Thanks for reading.

Houses are the big must have.
Then a general mercantile.
A corral, stable and/or blacksmith shop could attached. A smithy does not need to be large, forge and bellows, anvil, post vice, water tub, tool rack, coal pile, and some iron stock. This could all be in a small building to save modeling.
Hitching posts, water troughs, etc