DEAD MEN FOR BREAKFAST

There is no law west of St. Louis and no God west of Fort Smith.” So went one oft-repeated Old West saying, though the designated godless community shifted ever westward with the burgeoning flood of emigrants. While the fake news of the frontier era sensationalized much of the lore of the wide-open towns of the 1860s–80s—both to shock Easterners and hawk dime novels—there was no dearth of genuine Sodoms and Gomorrahs on the American frontier.

Formal law enforcement was generally a few jumps behind the thrown-together rail stops and boomtowns, and when lawmen did arrive, they were often ineffectual, crooked or both. As a result, the most heinous of crimes were often judged—if at all—in the folksiest of manners. For example, in July 1884 when former Dodge City assistant marshal “Mysterious Dave” Mather abruptly shot and killed his replacement and longtime nemesis Tom Nixon on a public sidewalk, a jury acquitted Mather on the grounds of self-defense. Although Nixon had made no move to draw, jurists seemingly reasoned that had Dave not killed Tom, Tom eventually would have done in Dave. They were probably right.

During the two decades the West was truly wild, countless towns developed reputations as virtual hellholes, wherein drinking, gambling and prostitution were rampant, and a man’s life was scarcely worth the cost of a .44 slug. Still later, in places like Cromwell, Okla., lawlessness persisted. While Tombstone (Arizona Territory), Deadwood (Dakota Territory) and Dodge City (Kansas) retain their hard-earned reputations as the most notorious towns of the Old West, plenty of other locales are “worthy” of consideration. Body counts in Tombstone triggered a saying the town “had a man for breakfast every morning,” but similar “cold breakfasts” were on the menu elsewhere. What follows is a compendium of 10 (well, make that unlucky 13, as we lump together four Montana Territory towns) of the other roughest communities where Western badmen—and not-so-good women—once hung their hats.

Ogallala, Nebraska

The settlement saddled with the sobriquet “Gomorrah of the Plains” started life two years after the American Civil War as a tank town along the Union Pacific Railroad. It comprised a water tower and a small section house until enterprising businessmen established a supply center to service the area’s trappers, soldiers and buffalo