Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Wednesday Western - Western Trivia

The ninety-eight meridian is usually considered the line where the Old West began and the East ended. This meridian is east of San Antonio, Texas and heads north through the middle of Oklahoma and Kansas, eastern Nebraska and the Dakotas. It's where the forests of the East end and the western grasslands began. Most western books use the Mississippi River as the line between the East and the West.

Silver City was a popular name for a town. You can find one in Idaho, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Utah.

Tombstone, Arizona was founded in 1879 on Goose Flats by Edward Lawrence "Ed" Schieffelin a U.S. Army scout. He was prospecting for gold and was told the only rock he'd find on Goose Flats was his tombstone. After he found silver, he called the claim, Tombstone.  The community was dubbed "The town too tough to die." In 1881 it became the seat of Cochise County, Arizona.

Two major West coast towns had major losses to fires. San Francisco had six fires from 1849 to 1851 due to randomly placed wooden structures that helped fires spread quickly. And June of 1889 Seattle had fifty blocks of wooden structures destroyed by fire.


Source: Old West Trivia Book by Don Bullis


6 comments:

Catherine Lee said...

Is every Wednesday Western Trivia? How did that come about? It's interesting.
catherinelee100 at gmail dot com

Paty Jager said...

Hi Catherine! No, I don't have trivia every Wednesday but I do have something western related.

bn100 said...

Didn't know there were a lot of cities with the same name

bn100candg at hotmail dot com

Paty Jager said...

bn100, I see you read about the contest on the blog. You can give Catherine a run for her money. I wish more people would leave a comment to join the fun!

joye said...

Interesting article. Back in 1953 I visited old Tombstone, AZ My high school social studies class visited the town which then had no paved streets, the newspaper office was open, and we toured the Schefflin mine. Those are now closed and it is very commercialized for the tourists. We also got to go through the Bird Cage Theatre. One can only go in the lobby now. It was a fun trip then.
JWIsley(at)aol(dot)com

Paty Jager said...

Joye, That sounds like a fun experience!