The Wild West 13: Hollywood

We didn’t become fascinated with the Wild West until Hollywood gave us gunfights at high noon and heroic outlaws. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, folks, erin here today, I am the bearer of
bad news. This episode of Grim and Mile Presents will
be the last, not just of this season, but of
the show. We've covered so much over the past four seasons,
and I hope that our journey through the high seas
and the back roads of America have helped you gain
a better understanding of who we are as a people
and how nuanced and textured our history is as a nation.

(00:23):
If this storytelling style is something that you have connected
with over the past couple of years, fear not. There
are other shows of mine that you can jump right into.
Cabinet of Curiosities is still going strong, over one hundred
twenty million downloads into its journey, and of course, my
dark history podcast Lore is quickly approaching its ninth anniversary
with close to three hundred episodes that are guaranteed to

(00:45):
leave you feeling a few chills down your spine. There
are others too. Back in August, the Grim and Mile
team and I launched a brand new weekly show called
That's Just Weird, covering weird news from the past and present,
along with one big weird news story EA and our
brand new show called Harlots, which explores the intersection of
sex and power throughout history, is wrapping up its first

(01:08):
season in just a few weeks. Here and all of
those shows, Lore, Cabinet of Curiosities, That's Just Weird, and
Harlots are all available everywhere you get your podcasts. You
can learn more about all of those shows and so
many others from our past over at Grimandmild dot com,
and now on with the show. To American settlers, the

(01:35):
West was a land of opportunity. Its soil was rich
with nutrients for growing all kinds of crops. Its hills
and mountains were teeming with fortune just one heave of
the pickaxe away. But even after the gold Rush had
ended and East Coast transplants moved back home with their
sifting pans between their legs, California still had more to offer.

(01:55):
In nineteen fifteen, a whole new group of people set
out west to seek their fortune and their freedom. Thanks
to one man, Thomas Edison, filmmakers had gotten their start
in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which was right across the
Hudson River from New York. The land was cheaper than
it was in the city, yet still close enough for
Broadway actors to take the ferry over to make movies.

(02:17):
But New Jersey was also home to the kinescope patent
holder Thomas Edison. The kinescope was the first motion picture
camera invented, primarily by Edison's employee William Kennedy Dixon, but
Edison held the patent, and he wielded it, along with
many others, like a sword against every filmmaker on the
East Coast. In nineteen oh seven, Edison partnered with several

(02:39):
other patent holders, like camera company Biograph and film manufacturer
Easpin Kodak to create the Motion Picture Patent's Company, otherwise
known as the Edison Trust. This cartel licensed its patents
out to six of America's largest filmmakers so they could
make their movies, but those films could not be sold
directly to distributors. All films had to be rented from

(03:01):
the Trust, and because all aspects of the process were
owned essentially by one man, that meant that Edison now
had a monopoly on filmmaking, and he went after anyone
caught violating his patents too. Movie houses that showed non
MPPC films were technically violating the law thanks to a
nineteen oh seven court case, and sometimes they found themselves

(03:23):
shut down by US marshals for doing so. If a
filmmaker or distributor still didn't get the hint, Edison would
send gangsters and hired goons to remind them about the patents.
There were also arbitrary and punitive rules dictating film lengths
and what kind of movies could even be made. They
was stifling, as you can imagine, so filmmakers started looking

(03:45):
for a way out, and around nineteen fifteen they found
it three thousand miles away in California, which was the
ideal location for movie making. The weather was perfect for
filming year round, the landscape was diverse, land was cheap,
and there was plenty of labor to help build the
new industry in a new place, far from the miserly

(04:05):
grasp of Thomas Edison. And what's more, California's court system
often sited with small independent outfits over large companies when
it came to patent disputes, and enforcing those patents from
across the country was going to be almost impossible for
Edison and his trust. The final blow to the inventor's
choke hold on the film industry came that same year

(04:25):
when the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the MPPC.
It said a patentee may simply enforce his right to
exclude infringement, but he must not use his patent as
a weapon to disable a rival contestant or to drive
him from the field, for he cannot justify such use.
In other words, Edison's reign of terror was over. Filmmakers

(04:49):
were now free to make the kinds of movies they wanted,
and now they could do it in the ideal location,
one that harkened back to a time not so long
before cowboys roam the range. I'm Aaron Mankee and Welcome
to the Wild West. In nineteen sixty two, Paramount Pictures

(05:19):
released the John Ford western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
The film stars Jimmy Stewart as an old frontier lawman
who tries to bring in a local outlaw without resorting
to violence. When the outlaw played by Lee Marvin, is
shot dead in a fight, Stuart's character believes that he
has done the deed, and in reality, his friend played
by John Wayne, had killed the outlaw to save the

(05:41):
law man's life. Stuart's character eventually confesses the truth to
an editor at his hometown newspaper, but the editor refuses
to print it. When asked why, the editor says, this
is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print
the legend. Throughout this fourth season of Grim and Maal Present,
we have examined the beloved tropes of Western culture, back

(06:03):
when good men walked tall and wore ten stars on
their chests. But that image of the lone gunslinger protecting
his town from the criminal element is fiction, a legend.
It's the product of nostalgia for good old days that
never really existed. They were painted into our memories by
directors like Ford or Sergio Leone or Howard Hawks, directors

(06:25):
who didn't know it at the time, but were shaping
the way that the Wild West would be remembered for
years to come. That period feels like a glitch in
the timeline, both older than it really was and yet
close enough to be romanticized. According to the US Census
Bureau of eighteen ninety, the country still had a frontier
up at that time, and then suddenly it didn't. Three

(06:47):
years later, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago featured a
city illuminated by electricity, as well as a two hundred
and sixty four foot tall observation wheel, the original Ferris wheel. Meanwhile,
well as the exposition pulsed with current, the American Historical
Association was conducting a meeting not too far away and
somewhere in a sweltering room, A young professor named Frederick

(07:10):
Jackson Turner stood up to speak, and I've mentioned him
in previous episodes this season, but let's go deeper into
his story. He was only thirty one years old at
the time, but wise beyond his years. Turner believed that
the frontiers of the Midwest and western United States had
been the catalyst for true independence for the American people.
To him, the wild West had been an outlet for

(07:33):
the violent tendencies of Westerners, and that without it, Americans
would lose the heartiness that allowed them to be self
reliant go getters. Turner's audience, however, was indifferent to his message,
likely wondering if they'd be done in time to catch
Buffalo Bill's last performance. Turner's frontier thesis didn't make much
of a splash at first. It was lost amongst the

(07:54):
other news coming out of the exposition, but after several
years his idea finally found its way into everything from
American politics to high school history and literature. His theory
was well on its way to reshaping and rewriting American life,
which was exactly what he had wanted at first. By
the time his Frontier thesis had reached public consciousness, he

(08:17):
had already realized that he was wrong the whole time,
and as with many ideas, once it got out, there
was no putting it back. Those ideas eventually leached into
everything from dime store novels and radio shows about life
on the Range to wild West shows. Audiences flocked to
see Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley put on the

(08:37):
root teutonist live performances in the country, ones that romanticized
the frontier while making light of the Native American's plight.
Those who couldn't make it to a live show or
didn't care to read, could listen to tales of honor
and justice each week on the radio. These audio plays
followed the same formula as their dime novel counterparts. There

(08:58):
was always a hero, Julie, a man who stood as
the law in a lawless town. Maybe he was the
marshal or a sheriff or a lone ranger using his
wits and his sharpshooting skills to keep outlaws and bandits
at bay. And in the process, the Western as a
genre became the quintessential venue for a showdown between good
and evil, and as the entertainment industry shifted its focus

(09:22):
from radio to film, those showdowns got a whole lot
more dramatic. Early silent films weren't just vehicles for fictional gunslingers.
Edison's earliest shorts captured re enactments from Buffalo Bill's Wild
West Show. Viewers could catch a glimpse of Annie Oakley
giving a demo of her sharpshooting skills, or of a
Native American performing a traditional buffalo dance before John Wayne

(09:45):
or Gary Cooper put on their spurs. Americans got to
see a version of the Wild West that they had
only dreamed about. Not long after these Edison films debuted,
Edwin s Porter filmed the very first Western, The Great
Train Robbery. At only eleven minutes long, it told the
sordid and bloody story of a violent robbery aboard a locomotive,

(10:06):
and it was only the beginning too. The Great Train
Robbery led the way for an entire genre of motion
pictures that appealed to all kinds of people, but mostly
conservative Americans longing for the good old days when men
were men and the law was respected. At least that's
how they saw it. In reality, the Western was about

(10:26):
to become a metaphor for doing the right thing against
a corrupt system of oppression, a standing alone for what
was right when everyone else was saying that it was wrong.
Toward the end of the nineteen twenties, as silent films
evolved into talkies, the Western genre remained a mainstay of

(10:50):
the medium. It consistently brought comfort and peace to a
nation contending with the socio political strife of an economic
depression and war. As the world continued to change, Americans
turned to westerns to feed their nostalgic cravings for a
time that never really existed, and Hollywood was only too

(11:10):
happy to oblige. The genre was deceptively deep, allowing writers
and directors to inject their stories with agendas and messages
meant to sway the movie going public toward their causes.
An audience could find just about anything they liked, be
it romance, gunfights, or even horror. When we think of
Hollywood westerns, we think of their Golden Age, namely the

(11:31):
period from the nineteen fifties through the mid nineteen seventies.
This is when actors such as John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart,
and Clint Eastwood donned their stets and hats and six
shooters to protect small one horse towns. The wild West
of these Golden Age films, though, was truly a frontier
for freedom for white Americans. They embodied the promise of

(11:51):
manifest destiny, but only on the surface. Behind the scenes,
that appearance of freedom came at a great cost, thanks
to the Hayes Code. The Hayes Code was a set
of rules that Hollywood imposed on itself to appease powerful
religious organizations who believe the movie industry was nothing but
a den of sin. Before the Code, filmmakers depicted sex

(12:12):
and violence on film without much regard for who might
be watching. After nineteen thirty six, offensive language, sex, adultery, sacrilege,
and extreme violence were outlawed. Thanks to the code's strict governance.
Of course, some films managed to slip through the cracks
with content that otherwise would not have been approved, and
the Code itself was updated over time, but for two decades,

(12:36):
if a director wanted to get his movie seen by
American audiences, it had to get the green light from
the Hayes Office. Over time, Hollywood's self censorship became less
of a priority. Don't get me wrong, the Hayes Code
was still being enforced well into the nineteen sixties. But
there was another threat waiting in the wings, one that,
according to the United States Government, was even more sinister

(12:58):
than a pistol full of blanks and role of thirty
five millimeter film communism. America's opposition to communism began during
the nineteen thirties, but took off in earnest following World
War II. The Soviet Union had been our allies during
the war, but things changed when all the nations returned
to their respective corners of the world. A task force

(13:18):
was formed called the House on American Activities Committee or HUAC.
It was charged with flushing out communists and communist sympathizers
from all facets of American life, including the government itself
and Hollywood. Now, the House on American Activities Committee couldn't
punish anyone for being a communist. Thanks to the First Amendment,

(13:38):
but they could hold individuals in contempt for refusing to testify,
and people who invoked their Fifth Amendment right to avoid
self incrimination or who did not hand over the names
of other alleged communists were blacklisted by their employers. And
perhaps no one is more remembered for such a thing
than the Hollywood Ten, a group of ten screenwriters who
refused to testify before the House on American Activities Committee

(14:02):
and then name names because they held firmed their principles.
The Hollywood Ten were cited for contempt of Congress and
spent a whole year in prison, but things didn't get
any better once they were released. Some of the men
left the industry entirely, while others continued to write under
fake names. For example, one guy named Dalton Trumbo wrote
the nineteen fifty sixth film The Brave One under the

(14:24):
pseudonym Robert Rich. So how did one screenwriter find himself
in the crosshairs of the House on American Activities Committee
during the Red Scare, especially when he was writing one
of the greatest American Western films of all time. After all,
it featured an honorable law man standing alone against evil,
an ideal example of the genre spirit. Well, not everyone

(14:46):
thought so, especially one conservative actor known for his portrayal
of macho cowboys and for his questionable beliefs. Carl Foreman
had written a number of films before nineteen fifty one,
including war pictures, noirs, and literary adaptations. He was a

(15:09):
skilled screenwriter who knew how to tell a good story,
and one year after the end of World War Two
he decided to tell a new kind. He drafted a
four page outline of a revisionist western about a loan
sheriff standing up against a band of outlaws. Now, for
those that don't know, revisionist westerns sort of tossed aside
the American individualism and ideals of the older films within

(15:31):
the genre, choosing instead to bring light to the corruption
and moral ambiguity of the bygone era. Foreman had a
solid narrative in his back pocket, but by nineteen forty
seven it became clear that it was very similar to
another story, a work of short fiction published in Colliers
by John Cunningham titled The Tin Star. So Foreman bought

(15:52):
the rights to the story and got to work on
a screenplay, pulling from both his outline and Cunningham's piece.
It was called High Noon, and it was about more
than just good versus evil. This was an allegory about
global unification against tyranny. It was a statement in support
of democracy. Now we don't need to understand the intricacies here,

(16:13):
but just know this. Such a plot would have been
plenty popular during the war, but after rampant anti Communist
attitudes took hold in the late forties, things had changed.
Foreman was at the top of his game in nineteen
fifty one, and he continued to plug away at the script.
He was working for a well regarded production company. He'd
been nominated twice for Best Screenplay, and he had just

(16:34):
moved into a Brentwood college once owned by Orson Wells
and Rita Hayworth. And then it happened. Foreman opened his
mailbox to a letter printed on pink paper. It had
come from Washington. He had been summoned to testify before
the House on American Activities Committee. Now Foreman had two options.
He could fully cooperate with their investigation and give up

(16:57):
the names of any supposed Communists that he might know,
or he could lie, hide and try to muddle the
truth as much as possible. Unfortunately, the proof was already there.
Carl Foreman had been a member of the American Communist
Party from the years nineteen thirty eight until nineteen forty two,
and he hadn't been the only one. A number of
Hollywood writers and actors had joined the party around that time,

(17:19):
but Foreman left after he enlisted to serve in World
War Two. Now he had to choose between being a
rat or killing his career, and neither option was ideal.
Luckily for him, he didn't have to appear right away.
His appointment with Congress wouldn't be for another few months,
so he continued to work on High Noon, and the
more he considered the story, the more he thought of

(17:41):
his immigrant family, of his socialist mother, of the Great Depression,
and how it had ended their business and wiped out
their fortunes. They had swung hard left politically because of
the crash, and Foreman was no different. He knew that
the Blacklist was going to devastate Hollywood and the country
as a whole. So he came to a decision, one
that would change his life and the landscape of the

(18:03):
western genre in Hollywood Forever. He tweaked the plot of
High Noon to reflect the current American political climate. His protagonist,
a Marshal named Will Caine, would represent Foreman himself, a
solitary force of good going up against the bandits of
the House on American Activities Committee. The townspeople that Caine

(18:24):
failed to recruit to help him take on the outsider
threat were now Foreman's fellow screenwriters and other professionals who
stood idly by as the government brought its boot down
on him. But Carl Foreman had a supporter who also
felt the pressure of Washington's anti Communist committee. His name
was Stanley Kramer. Kramer was the producer of the film

(18:44):
and Foreman's friend. He had signed a five year, thirty
film deal with Columbia Pictures, which had been a major
milestone for his fledgling company. But Foreman now had a
major target on his back, and every day he continued
to work on the project that Bullseye White a little
more to include Kramer himself. But just like Carl Foreman,

(19:04):
Stanley Kramer had a choice to make. He could stay
true to his friend and risk his production company, or
cut Foreman loose and destroy the man's career. It didn't
help that Karl had never written a Western before and
the Pictures director Fred Zeinerman had never directed one. But
this wasn't a shoot him up like the westerns of old.
This was a character driven story with sharp dialogue and

(19:27):
tightly wound suspense, the latter of which was emphasized by
the frequent appearance of ticking clocks throughout the film, each
of them counting down to the twelve pm mark, when
the protagonist's enemy was scheduled to finally make his appearance.
To play the Harry Marshall will Kine Kramer hired Gary Cooper.
Cooper had been a big star in the years prior,

(19:48):
but hadn't been doing so well career wise for some time,
and saw great potential in High Noon script. His love
interest was played by an up and comer that you
may or may not have heard of, Grace Kelly, the
future Princess of Monaco. While the producer secured the cast
and prepared the shoot, Carl Foreman's date with the House
on American Activities Committee began to draw closer. Gary Cooper

(20:10):
wound up befriending Carl over the course of their working
together on the film, and even volunteered to speak before
the committee on his behalf but Foreman's lawyers refused to
allow it. Finally, Stanley Kramer had had enough. Washington had
been breathing down his neck for some time, so he
confronted Carl Foreman with two demands. First, he needed to
resign from High Noon, and second, he had to sell

(20:31):
off his stock options in the picture. Foreman refused, though,
which led to Kramer firing him anyway. But there was
just one problem. Foreman hadn't signed a contract deferring his salary.
This meant that the bank providing the film's financing could
cut off access at any time, bringing production to a halt.
Kramer's hand was forced. He re hired Foreman as writer

(20:53):
and associate producer, but their friendship would never recover. On
September twenty fourth of nineteen fifty one, Foreman's judgment day
had finally arrived. He drove himself to the Los Angeles
Federal Building for his hearing with the House on American
Activities Committee. They asked him if he was a member
of the Communist Party, which he answered truthfully. He was
not currently a member of the party, as evidenced by

(21:16):
the loyalty oath that he had just signed, but when
he was asked if he had ever been a member
prior to nineteen fifty, Foreman pled the fifth. He also
wouldn't give up the names of any other Communists that
he knew. His testimony led to disastrous consequences for his career,
with stakeholders and company directors of High Noon legally removing
all traces of him from the picture. Foreman also accepted

(21:39):
one hundred fifty thousand dollars in exchange for his associate
producer credit. Some felt that he should have held firm,
but he needed the money. It didn't matter that he
was one of the best screenwriters Hollywood had to offer.
He was officially blacklisted, and now he was out of
a job. Of course, Carl Foreman was not the only

(22:03):
victim of the House on American Activities Committee. Around five
hundred members of the motion picture industry found themselves out
of work for a decade or more. Some took their
lives through suicide as a result, while others died from
the stress. Studios also stopped pouring money into films that
they felt had a political agenda. They simply didn't want
to deal with the headaches from Washington, leaving movies like

(22:26):
High Noon a rarity, but Stanley Kramer eventually saw the
lights after his partnership with Columbia dissolved. He went on
to make nineteen fifty eight s The Defiant Ones with
blacklisted screenwriter Nedrick Young, and when Young won the Academy
Award for Best Screenplay alongside his co writer Harold Jacob Smith,
his identity remained public. Foreman, on the other hand, had

(22:48):
to flee the United States and ended up in London.
He went on to write Bridge on the River Qui
in Secret along with his fellow blacklisted writer Michael Wilson.
That film won the Oscar for Best Quarsplay as well,
but Foreman didn't receive credit for it until more than
thirty years later. And meanwhile, High Noon had been a
roaring success. It remained a popular Western for decades. Some, however,

(23:12):
didn't appreciate its not so subtle message, namely John Wayne.
Wayne was a staunch conservative and an outspoken member of
an anti communist group called the Motion Picture Alliance for
the Preservation of American Ideals. He led conservative Hollywood in
a campaign against High Noon, calling it then, I quote,
the most Unamerican thing I've seen in my whole life.

(23:34):
He'd even been offered the role of will Kine, but
had turned it down because of what he considered to
be the film's pro communist sentiments, although it could be
argued that exercising one's First Amendment right to comment on
the country's failings at the expense of freedom was probably
the most American thing someone could do. Well. Despite Wayne's
vocal opposition of the film, Hi Noon went on to

(23:56):
be nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor,
and Best Screenplay, but there was a problem when the
winners for the Best Actor category were announced. Gary Cooper,
who had played the Marshall will Kine in the film,
was overseas filming another project. Unable to accept the award himself,
he asked a good friend to go on stage in

(24:17):
his behalf, knowing that that friend would be in the audience,
and so as the name Gary Cooper rang in everyone's ears,
one man rose from his seat and traveled down the
aisle to the stage. He took hold of the golden statue,
smiled and said, I'm glad to see that they're giving
this to a man who is not only most deserving,
but has conducted himself throughout his years in our business

(24:38):
in a manner we can all be proud of. At
the end of his speech, the audience applauded and the
man sauntered off the stage. Oh and the name of
that friend that Gary Cooper had called in to take
his place? It was the film's biggest critic and opponent,
fellow actor and Western legend John Wayne. I truly do

(25:03):
hope that you've enjoyed our journey through the Wild West
over the past thirteen episodes. It's a misunderstood and misrepresented
period of American history, but my team and I firmly
believe that the stories we presented to you offer a
more accurate and more nuanced look at what really happened.
And if you enjoyed today's exploration of how Hollywood catched

(25:24):
in on the myth of the West, then you'll want
to stick around through the sponsored break. We've saved one
more powerful story, and my teammates Ali Stead will tell
you all about it.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Nostalgia for the Wild West doesn't live in a vacuum,
nor has it disappeared. It's still all around us, evident
in television shows like Yellowstone, which presents a modern take
on the sanitized whitewashed and ultraviolent version of what men
like John Wayne thought the Wild West was actually like.

(26:03):
Or in Westworld, where the audiences can live vicariously through
characters who get to explore their wildest Wild West fantasies.
Above all else, these shows leave viewers wondering, would I
have been a hero with a badge on my chest?
Or would I have been the outlaw clad in all
black and taking what I wanted?

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Well?

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Once upon a time, for a little while, that question
could have been easily answered in a place called Palisade, Nevada.
It all started in the eighteen forties when a new
railroad was proposed that would connect the East and the
West coasts. Railroad executives didn't have time to waste on
figuring out treaties or territorial rights, so they just started

(26:46):
petitioning Congress. The concept was rejected year after year until
the passage of the Railroad Act of eighteen sixty two,
which allowed the new track to be laid. The plan
was to have the Central Railroad Company of cal California
meet the newly created Union Pacific Railroad in the middle
of the country. Construction began in eighteen sixty three, with

(27:08):
much of the labor being performed by immigrants from China
and Ireland. Meanwhile, the government worked out with the railroad
companies where new stations and therefore new towns would be built.
There was no rhyme or reason to it. Pins were
tossed onto maps with little regard for the viability of
the towns that were being proposed. Some would thrive, while

(27:29):
others would succumb to the dangers of frontier living. Gold
fever back in the eighteen forties had helped flood the
West with fresh blood, but towns that sprouted overnight seemed
to disappear almost as quickly when those gilded promises were
washed away like grit in the river. One town named
Palisade was founded in eighteen sixty eight. It was meant

(27:51):
to be a stop on the Central Pacific Railroad, which
would bring people to and from Nevada. This included wealthy
investors in the nearby silver mine. Palisade promised to become
a prominent destination, with folks coming through on their way
to Chicago or San Francisco. Unfortunately, few passengers really stuck
around and spent money there. It was a small town

(28:13):
with a population of only six hundred people, and other
than the silver mine, there wasn't a lot to do.
Word of their guests disappointment made it back to the townsfolk,
who understood what was missing the full wild West experience.
You see, years earlier, pioneers had traveled out west and

(28:35):
written to their friends and family, and even to newspapers
back east about their exciting adventures. Their readers had gotten
a taste of the lawlessness and danger that was apparently
prevalent in the western boom towns like Palisade. Unfortunately, when
those visitors checked out, they didn't exactly get the experience

(28:55):
they were hoping for. So the citizens of Palisade decided
to take matters into their own hands. In the early
eighteen seventies, when trains pulled into Palisade Station, passengers could
expect to see lawmen and outlaws having shootouts at high
noon in the middle of the street. Bodies hit the
floor while bank robbers made daring escapes in broad daylight.

(29:17):
It was exactly what they read about the news articles
and dime novels, and it was completely fake. The whole
town was in on it, including the pistols, the bank robberies.
They'd even gotten animal blood from nearby slaughterhouses to sell
the grizzly death scenes. No one missed out on the fun.
Even the local Shoshoni tribe members got in on the

(29:38):
action by performing raids on the town, really selling battles
with locals and pretending to scalp them at the end.
Even railroad employees were known to sneak actors onto the
trains to set everyone up before they pulled into Palisade.
Funnily enough, despite the town's notoriety as a den of
sin and violence, it had no sheriff. Over the course

(30:01):
of these reenactments, more people were killed in Palisade than
actually lived there, and the travelers were none to observant.
They never noticed that they themselves weren't the targets of
these ruthless outlaws. Over time, as the West was settled
and fewer and fewer people were coming through looking for
a show, Palisade and other boomtowns folded up shop. The

(30:25):
pops of gunshots were soon replaced with the eerie sound
of wind whistling through a ghost town. A flood in
nineteen ten decimated the area, and by the nineteen thirties
the railroad had shut down as well. Buildings disappeared, leaving
nothing behind but the land. But the name Palisade would

(30:45):
grace American's lips a couple of more times before fading
into complete obscurity. According to one legend, President Herbert Hoover
was passing through in nineteen thirty two when his train
was overcome by strangers armed with two dozen sticks of dynamite.
Two men reportedly scuffled with the railroad inspector before running off.

(31:07):
One inspector claimed there hadn't even been dynamite to begin with. Finally,
in two thousand and five, the heir to the town
of Palisades sold it at auction for one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. It's not known who bought it, but
according to one article, a whole lot of nothing in
the middle of nowhere sold for one hundred and fifty thousand,

(31:27):
the most money ever paid for nothing that anyone could remember. Sadly,
that's what remains of the wild West today, romantic notions
of a time that never really existed. In other words,
a whole lot of nothing.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Grim and Maud Presents The Wild West was executive produced
by me Aaron Mankey and hosted by Aaron Mankey and
Alexandra Steed. Writing for this season was provided by Michelle Mudo,
with research by Alexandra Steed, Sam Alberty, Cassandra de Alba,
and Harry Marx. Fact Checking was performed by Jamie Vargas,
with sensitivity reading by Stacy Parshall Jensen. Production assistance was

(32:06):
provided by Josh Stain, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
To learn more about this and other shows from Grim
and Mild and iHeartRadio, visit Grimandmild dot com