Towns Built in a Day

The early towns that sprang up along the tracks of the railroads didn't last long.  Those that were planned for the future did.  They were the ones that immediately elected town councils and a mayor, even without salaries to support them. Those salaries were paid by fining the gamblers every morning and using that money to pay salaries and begin building the first streets. Sometimes the planned streets were filled with occupied tents of claim holders, forcing those settlers to move their claim.  Mules pulled giant logs along, dragging the poles to make the street. 

The hurry to settle these towns became a waiting process.  One journalist wrote, "It seems you were always waiting you turn.  You waited your turn to file on the land, you waited your turn to get a bucket of water, you waited your turn to get a bit of food.  Just about everything you wanted to do, your waited your turn."

Something that did work in these early towns were the businesses.  Businesses were opened with just a box and a chair along a dirt road.  With no judge, and no courts, lawyers were kept busy filing land claims from 25 cents to $2.00 per claim, and served as arbitrators of land disputes as well.   Men found imaginative ways to make a living.  One settler built a public restroom on his claim and earned enough money to open a harness business. One blacksmith saw that a single dentist in town was overwhelmed with patients so he took up tooth-pulling as a side job.  Whatever it took to make it. 

The first legal saloon in Guthrie, Oklahoma, the Good Times Saloon, was opened in 1890 by Moses Weinburger.  During Guthrie's time as the capital of Oklahoma, it attracted some notable people - Tom Mix, cowboy movie star, was a bartender for one of the towns saloons.  Will Rogers and William Wrigley were residents, where Wrigley produced his first pack of chewing gum.  Carry Nation began her saloon crashing campaign for temperance in Guthrie. 

The early prairie towns were built quick and for some lasting, but it wasn't pretty nor was easy.  For the most part these were farming towns and farmers supported the businesses of these towns.

Next time...Trouble Ahead
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On November 8, 1897, Doc Henry Doe Holiday–gunslinger, gambler, and occasional dentist–dies from tuberculosis. He was perhaps most famous for his participation in the shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.