Wild West – RANDOM Times •

Boot Hill Cemetery: “They died with their boots on.”

8 Mar 20217 Mar 2021 Leo S

Boot Hill cemetery is located in downtown Tilden, Texas. It is one of the only two authentic cemeteries of its kind in the southwest and was named Boothill because so many of those who were interred there died violently, literally “with their boots on.” Tilden was founded in 1858, and was first known as Frio Rio. It was one of the first two settlements in McMullen County, and it had eight to ten crude dwellings that housed about thirty people. Soon afterward the townspeople built a road connecting their settlement…

Silver City Cemetery: all that remain of a once-booming mining town.

26 Feb 202017 Apr 2020 Leo S

The Silver City Cemetery looks as if it were pulled directly from a Western movie: worn headstones, scraggly trees, and peeling picket fences which create a beautiful, yet nostalgic, portrait of the American southwest. Nestled in a grove of trees just off US Highway 50, the site sits as a sad final reminder of what was once a booming mining town. Silver City was a silver mining town about 90 miles (140 km) south-southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, an area considered part of the Tintic Mining District that also…

Chloride, Arizona: a living Ghost Town~

7 Nov 20195 Nov 2019 Leo S

Located just a short drive from the abandoned (and almost disappeared) town of Santa Claus, Chloride seems to resemble any kitschy Wild West village turned tourist trap. However, if you look a little deeper, you’ll find something that makes this ghost town stand out: a wonderfully unusual collection of junk art and a display of giant murals! The city is an old silver mining camp in Mohave County and the oldest continuously inhabited mining town in the state. Scientifically, chloride is an ion used to desalinate seawater into drinking water,…

George Parrot: the bandit who was transformed into a pair of shoes

8 Jul 20197 Jul 2019 Adam

When we talk about “Wild West”, referring, of course, to the conquest of the western territories of the United States, perhaps we do not have the real perception of how that era was dangerous and characterized by chilling events, not all linked to the genocide of Native Americans. Exposed at the Carbon County Museum in the town of Rawlins, Wyoming, there is a macabre trophy: a pair of shoes made of human skin, that of a man named George Parrot. The man, who was also known as Big Nose George,…