Rowdy frontier railroad towns struck visitors as mean and foul-smelling

Evidence

It is an ill-arranged set of frame houses and shanties; and rubbish heaps, and offal of deer and antelope, produce the foulest smells I have smelt for a long time. Some of the houses are painted a blinding white; others are unpainted; there is not a bush, or garden, or green thing; it just straggles out promiscuously on the boundless brown plains, on the extreme verge of which three toothy peaks are seen. It is utterly slovenly-looking and unornamental, abounds in slouching bar-room-looking characters, and looks a place of low, mean lives. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 45

Categorization

• FICTION: The sensory inventory of an ugly, reeking new frontier town — smells, wrong paint choices, absence of green — is a concrete anchor for any period scene.
• CANDY: 1880s Cheyenne smelled of deer offal and had no bush or garden — a vivid, tweetable period detail.