Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1883 — Mushroom Western Towns. [ARTICLE]

Mushroom Western Towns.

In describing the growth of a mushroom “railroad” town in the West a New York Sun correspondent says : The first street is always parallel with the railroad track, extending each way from the station. The second street runs off at right angles, and, if the growth of the town continues, it usually becomes in time the more important highway. Oth.Jr streets are laid out, right and left, shanties and brick buildings spring up side by side, and in a few months the real estate agent is prepared to exhibit a city map, platted on a scale that would suit a place of 50,000 inhabitants, and to give you your choice of town lots at from $25 to $2,000 apieee. It is only about a year since the first house was erected in Billings. Now there are nearly five hundred houses, and the population -is well up to twenty-five hundred. It has a brick church, a bank, several schools, three newspapers, three hotels, and a horse railroad. Statistics of population, however, are of trifling value in towns that double their inhabitants in a few weeks or a few months. The social and business development of the town generally follows this order : Saloons, stores in which the necessaries of life are sold, gambling establishments,daily newspapers, school houses, a bank, a church, a wholesale store, a jail. For a time the saloons and the newspaper struggle for numerical supremacy. The appeaaance of the jail marks a distinct epoch in the crystallization of society. The jail at Livingstone, the newest of the cities, was just finished, and had no inmates. It is a one-story structure of brick and stucco, standing next to a log house with red shades in the windows and this sign over the door: “Miss Crickett’s Palace.” The jail at Bozeman, which is comparatively an old place, contained twenty-seven prisoners, seven of whom were held for murder.