THE ROUGHEST, TOUGHEST TOWN THAT WASN’T
by
Michael A. McKeever
Tension
hung in the air thick as gun smoke as the train pulled into the station.
“Palisade!” called the conductor. “This is Palisade, Nevada .” He told the passengers that they
could get off and stretch their legs while the locomotive took on water. “But,”
he added ominously, “be very careful.”
The streets
were crowded with gunfighters, he warned, each one meaner than a whiskey glass
full of rattlesnake venom. And not only that, he shuddered, but Indians were on
the warpath just outside of town. In the far west of the 1870s no other town
was as wild and wooly as Palisade.
The
locomotive hissed steam as it took on water from a big tank. Passengers peered
nervously through the train’s windows. A brave few got out for a breath of
fresh air. Looking fearfully around they saw the streets were indeed full of
tough-looking hombres who glared at each other. Some passengers got right back
on the train and the rest stayed close.
Suddenly
the air was shattered by the roar of gunfire. Pistols blazed as men whirled and
fell into the dust. And as if that wasn’t enough, Indians attacked, riding down
the street yelling blood-curdling war cries. Terrified passengers scrambled
back onboard the train.
The
locomotive whistle shrieked as the train pulled out of town. The passengers
sagged in their seats, grateful to have escaped with their lives. It was a
miracle that none of them had been killed.
But if they
looked back at Palisade they saw something even more astonishing. The “dead
bodies” sprawled in the street were coming back to life. In fact they were
getting up! Indians and townsfolk stood by the train tracks laughing together.
Nobody had been killed. Both the “gunfighters’” bullets and the Indians’ arrows
had been shot harmlessly into the air.
It had all
been a grand joke played on the passengers by the people of Palisade. Nearby
Shoshone Indians had joined the fun. And of course the train crew was in on the
joke as well.
Palisade, Nevada was actually such
a peaceful town that it didn’t even have a sheriff. It was a hard-working
railroad town of three hundred souls. As well as a transfer point for Central
Pacific trains Palisade was also the destination for the narrow-gauge ore-carrying
Eureka & Palisade mine train. But on their off time there wasn’t much for
the workers to do other than fish for trout in the nearby Humboldt
River .
In other words living in such a
quiet place could get a trifle boring. So, to liven things up, the townspeople
and their Shoshone neighbors got together from time to time and put on a show.
Many of the passengers on the trains were eastern “tenderfeet” who had heard
all about the “Wild West.” And that’s just what citizens of Palisade gave them.
To keep things
fresh the cast (which included just about everyone in town) would sometimes vary
the “show.” In the morning one train-load of passengers might find themselves
caught between feuding cowboys in a fierce gunfight. In the afternoon another
train might pull in just as the bank was being robbed.
Nobody ever
counted how many times the bank was robbed. But for three riotous years the citizens of Palisade performed their
shoot-‘em-up melodramas over a thousand times. The reputation of the little
town was so ferocious that once the President in far off Washington
D.C.
In time the
townspeople grew weary of the joke. The town was already beginning to fade
away. The mines gave out and the Eureka & Palisade RR stopped running. The
Central Pacific built larger more modern facilities elsewhere. The final blow came
when the U.S. Postal Service closed down Palisade’s post office in 1962.
Today only
crumbling ruins among the sagebrush mark the town. Jackrabbits scamper where
once desperados shot it out. But time has silenced their gunfire, today only
the soothing sound of the Humboldt River flowing
past can be heard. On the river’s eastern bank sleek Amtrak expresses hurtle
past on gleaming steel rails. But the
trains don’t stop at Palisade anymore.
-The End-
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