The Old Wild West

[Allen]

Something a little different for the chit kickers (literally).

Watching old westerns and reading articles I am saying and assuming that the old wild west during the gold rush days resulted in:

There was no power and electricity was just coming around in the large cites and for the rich so lamp oil was used. Lighting at night was poor and many fires occurred because of the lamps being knocked over or broken.

Water was very scarce on the prairie. Many farmers and ranchers went under because of this. Cold beer advertised at the saloons was later revised to cool beer since there was no ice during the hot months. Beer had to be cooled submerged in a water well, creek or a tub of water. Neither was really much cooler. Ice was brought in from the mountain regions covered with hay but during hot weather didn't last long of course. Prairie areas had no ice tipped mountains either. Water could only be frozen during the winter when there wasn't as much need for it.

I was watching an old episode of Gunsmoke the other night. It was the peak of summer on the prairie. Matt went to visit and was offered some "ice cold buttermilk". The milk was in a metal pitcher on a table in a one room shack. That milk would have had to be around 100 degree's in real life.

Bath water had to be heated (if at all) using wood fired stoves. Baths were considered a luxury by many. It was common for men to bathe only once a month or so. In movies and on TV the women are almost always portrayed as being petite and lovely models. Looking at actual old photos many of them didn't look much better than the men and probably didn't smell any better.

The streets in the towns were dirt. Horses crapped and peed everywhere. The crap was seldom removed. Often it was just shoveled to the side where people could enter and exit the places of business. After a rain the streets pretty much turned into open sewers. This "stuff" was on everyone's boots/shoes and pants legs so the odor was always present. Add that to the "no bath" residents and non-ventilated buildings. Everyone who rode a horse smelled like a horse when they got off of one. If any manure was shoveled on to a manure wagon the wagon was only moved just off of the street so the smell didn't go very far. Trash was also dumped on the streets.

As towns grew some people were paid or volunteered to shovel the crap but no doubt couldn't stay ahead of the supply.

Thoughts? Comments? Corrections? Things to add?

[PWC]

My grandfather was born in 1880, at the end of the cowboy era. In the early '50s when he got a TV, he used to laugh at Hollywood depicting a cowboy or group of cowboys taking over a town. He said the townfolk would just get togethet and shoot them, in the back or whatever. It was "their" town and they worked hard for it and wouldn't let someone take it over. He was a farmer in Yukon, OK and also delivered mail on horseback at a time when Postmen had to be armed because people sent cash in the mail and armed robbery was prevelent. Thankfully he never was. Dad said he had a 45 Colt long barrel: wish I knew what happened to it, probably sold to help on his farm.

My father was born in 1911 and told me that in the winter, in Yukon, OK, the No. Canadian river on the back of my grandfather's place, froze over and towns people cut up the Ice and stored the blocks in town in an insulated Ice House and packed the ice in sawdust. The Ice man dropped off deliveries when he saw a sign in the window.

[Mark in Ottawa]

I've read that when automobiles were first introduced, they were welcomed since people saw them as a way to get rid of the pollution from horse droppings. How things do change.

[Johnny P]

One of the first cities in the U.S. to have an AC electric power grid was Telluride, Colorado. The mine owners wanted reliable electric power to the mines, and got Tesla to build an alternating current power plant there. The city of Telluride benefited from the power plant by having a power grid constructed in their city.

If you have ever been to Telluride, you know that it is in the middle of no where.

[barretcreek]

Neighbor grew up in Telluride, joined the Navy around '60. All left and sold his grandmother's house for price of car maybe.

[Johnny P]

There are quite a few videos on Black Bear Pass on You Tube, but can't imagine going up or down this thing in a wagon pulled by horses or mules.

You can see Telluride as they start down the pass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dGt-mSWZRA

[RED]

I worked for a company that made and sold lead acid batteries. Their original purpose in the 1920's was to use the batteries to light the barn so the farmers could milk their cows before sunrise .

One of their best customers was the buggy driving Amish. They had to have tail lights by state laws.

[Allen]

Since saloons and restaurants back then had to serve a lot of water, coffee, and tea plus provide water for cleanup after bathroom visits I assume they had their own covered (to prevent contamination) water wells. Some towns, as portrayed on TV maybe had a community well that was used by everyone and somewhat protected from sabotage from villains.

Speaking of bathroom visits, I guess all businesses that offered restrooms were some type of outdoor toilets perhaps detached or in a separate area away from the business.

Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke sure did wear a lot of makeup, a beauty mark, and fake eyelashes, yet they don't show anything like that being available in the one and only general store nor is there a beauty salon there. Makeup I guess was sold in the big cities but Dodge City was out in the middle of nowhere and I don't think catalog ordering was offered yet, at least not for cosmetics. I donno though---I wasn't there.

As hot as it was in the prairie, desert, and mountain regions of the old West windows had to be kept shut or covered with cloth to prevent dust and sand from blowing in.

Due to hardships, trial and error, and technology, we have a lot of conveniences now than those who lived before us but overall still have rough lives. I guess the more solutions and inventions we acquire the more problems we produce.

Think what actual time travel would be like: us going back to those times and those people coming into our times now.

[PWC]

I don't know how many here have used an outhouse; I have many times, on my grandparents farm as said in post #2. I don't mean the blue portable things with plastic seats and an air vent with toilet paper; in older times that would have been the king's toilet.

Johnny Carson used to make a lot of fun of catalogs and outhouses; I could tell he never used one. When we had "strike anywhere" matches they came in a box with a sleeve cover that the matchbox slid out of. In the outhouse there was a holder to slide the matches into and allowed matches to be picked out 1 or 2 at a time. There was always a Sears or Wards catalog too. It also had the modern amenity of toilet paper.

The idea of the catalog was to tear out a page, roll/crumple it up, light it with a match and pass it around under the seat to burn out any critters lurking there that might want to bite your ass. Then drop it in the hole. Nope, never an explosion from the plentiful gas. The seat was only a wide board with a smoothed hole to prevent splinters (bad juju), there was no seat to be left up.

My father lived to be 98 and my nephew once asked him what, to him, was the most important invention. Dad was quiet for awhile then said it was the flashlight. We were all expecting an answer like space flight, or the bomb, etc. My nephew asked why that, and dad said, "You've never gone to the outhouse with a kerosene lamp."

[Mark in Ottawa]

I attended a lecture on the subject of the most important inventions for modern society. One of the first ones was Mr Crappers Flush Toilet, Before its invention, the British government would not let anybody use London's clean water supply for sewage management since there would have been no controls on the amount of water that was used. The flush toilet solved that problem.

Some of the other inventions mentioned were the elevator which enabled the development of tall buildings and the electric motor and controls which enabled the development of mass transit, both of which made large cities possible