The rip-roaring Old West towns on TV don’t hold a candle to the reality of what became a temporary town located 3 miles east of Sinclair, Wyoming.
The end-of-tracks gathering that existed for several months in 1868 as the Union Pacific laid its steel toward Promontory Summit, Utah, was more a riot than a community. It offered 23 saloons, five dance houses, 3,000 people and a reputation akin to the biblical Sodom.
Carbon County Museum Curator Andy Webster said a file in the museum showed a cemetery was needed the same day the town was established. Like other track-end places, its purpose was to house and entertain the men who hauled ties and graded the railroad.
But much of the entertainment in Benton, Wyoming, led to murder and mayhem. And it had a big problem with water.
“Water carted from the North Platte River 2 miles away sold door-to-door went for $1 by the barrel or 10 cents per bucket,” Webster said. “Too expensive for washing.”
A visitor to the frontier destination on Sept. 15, 1868, had his observation published in the St. Clairsville, Ohio Belmont Chronicle newspaper.
“Benton is emphatically a poor town, with nothing worthy about its description,” he wrote.
A journalist who visited the city named J. H. Beadle penned that the “streets were eight inches deep in white dust … and a new arrival with black clothes looked like nothing so much as a cockroach struggling through a flour barrel.”
Tent Town
Like other towns springing up along the Union Pacific line, much of the city existed in tents. Speculators tried to sell lots to those who were looking to put down roots that could grow into a prosperous future.
But Benton was not a place for families.
Newspapers that sent reporters to the town to check out how wild it was didn’t fail to find it fulfilled its reputation.
A reporter who wrote a story published in the Little Rock, Arkansas, True Democrat on Aug. 25, 1868, described the town as “evil-looking men under slouched hats with deadly revolvers and bowie knives” and “vulgar talking women, whiskey gambling halls, dance houses, and deep and terrible curses which almost make the hair stand on end.”
He called it a “modern Sodom.”
In the book “Ghost Towns of Wyoming” authors Mary Lou Pence and Lola M. Homsher described the three-month wonder as a place where outlaws walked around in the open, bandit gangs operated and prostitutes worked openly. Historian Charles G. Coutant observed that it was a place where “murder was an everyday occurrence.”
In its short existence over the summer and into the fall of 1868 more than 100 people filled its graveyard.
Stage Robbed
In a story published in Iowa’s Muscatine Journal on Sept. 4, 1868, the Wells Fargo stagecoach was robbed between Benton and Green River on Aug. 26 in the early morning.
“About half-past 1 o’clock four men disguised stepped out in front of the horses and demanded the driver give up the reins and his arms,” the newspaper reported. “One of the robbers mounted the coach and threw off the treasure box, ordered the driver to get back on his seat, handed him his arms and reins and ordered him to drive on. … The amount taken is reported at $100,000.”
A correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper visited the city on Aug. 12, 1868, and reported what he saw. His account was published in several newspapers including the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette.
He wrote that he was sitting in a tent during the afternoon of Aug. 8 and heard a shot in the street. He went to the tent door and saw a man across the street stagger and hold onto a post for support as the shooter was about to fire again. Instead, the shooter was struck from behind. The man lived for two days and died on Aug 10. That afternoon he heard a great commotion.
“The whole population of the city was out at once, and merchants, plainsmen, sports and women mingled in a wild throng for it was generally understood there was to be a hanging at once,” he reported.
The shooter was shown the dead corpse and then he reported that the crowd started yelling “to the telegraph pole, to the telegraph pole.”
A historical marker at the site where Benton existed states it lasted 60 days, but it lasted months longer according to newspaper accounts. (Courtesy Wyoming State Archives) 
Left, a report in the Little Rock, Arkansas True Democrat newspaper in August 1868 described a lawless and wild community. Right, a correspondent from the Cincinnati Commercial saw a shooting in Benton, Wyoming right before his eyes. (Newspapers.com) 
The Muscatine Journal in Iowa published an account of a stage robbery between Benton and Green River in August 1868. (Newspapers.com) 
The mostly tent city of Benton needed to haul water from the North Platte River 2 miles away. (Courtesy Wyoming State Archives)
Brutal Beating
The suspect was rescued by soldiers, but the writer believed that he would still be hanged. Meanwhile after that incident, the reporter said he saw a saloon operator beating on “his woman giving her what the western roughs call a mule persuader.”
“It was a brutal and sickening sight,” the reporter wrote.
Benton included a big, framed gambling and saloon tent that was 100-feet long and 40-feet wide. It was a place where the Cincinnati Commercial reporter went to study the Wild West, and he found that the “western roughs” had little regard for life or money. The latter because they gambled it away in the tent’s games so easily.
“As you enter, the right side is lined with a splendid bar, supplied with every variety of liquors and cigars, with cut glass goblets, ice pitchers, splendid mirrors and pictures rivaling those of our eastern cities,” he wrote. “In the back end a space large enough for one cotillion is left open for dancing … while all the rest of the room is filled with tables devoted to monte, faro, rondo, fortune wheels, and every other species of gambling known.”
At night, he said the tent was filled with up of 400 miners, ranch men, clerks, bullwhackers, gamblers, and “cappers” — a possible reference to those wearing fancy eastern hats.
The sin in the city also brought those trying to share the message of the gospel. A Methodist layman was in town as the True Democrat reporter visited. The Methodist asked the owner of a gambling hall is he could use his room for half an hour.
Brave Preacher
While the gambling did not cease, the man preached.
“The brave old disciple is interrupted but still keeps on telling the crowd of the wickedness of their ways,” the reporter said. “No violence is offered but someone disrespectfully remarks ‘Set up the pizen (poison or alcohol), Cap, if you want us to hear you.’ … Each remark is followed by boisterous laughter until the proprietor orders the preaching to be stopped, as he said it was injuring his trade.”
The same reporter recounted a murder while he was there by a man named “Mike Kelly” of Council Bluffs, Iowa. A Lynch mob formed but he was rescued and arrested by soldiers from Fort Steele. Before his trial, Kelly made his escape, the soldiers reported.
“It is said that Kelly had $1,500 at the time of his arrest,” the True Democrat journalist wrote. “Comment is unnecessary. Money tells.”
However, that same suspect was arrested again the following year by Albany County Sheriff N. K. Boswell, after he tracked him down to Iowa, the Cheyenne Democratic Leader reported on Sept. 11, 1869.
“Kelly was lodged in jail and on yesterday, in the company with United States officers was brought out and started for Benton, where we hope he will have proper justice meted out to him,” the paper reported. How he would find justice in a place that at that point barely existed if at all is not clear.
An article in the Rawlins Republican on Sept. 1, 1921, outlined why Benton became a ghost town and Rawlins the next place on the United Pacific line became rooted and prosperous.
“In the early days there was at the western limits of Rawlins a large spring which looked as if it would supply unlimited quality water for years to come,” the newspaper reported. “The railroad which had been hauling water from the Platte to Benton decided that this was the ideal location for a terminal, so established it here. … In the early days stages and freight teams ran out of Rawlins in every direction.”
As the railroad moved West, those in Benton moved on. But for six months or so in 1868, it had a few thousand rowdy residents and a reputation. And after the tents and foundations were gone, the ghost town kept pulling some people back to its memory.
Rawlins postmaster Perry L. Smith told the Rawlins Republican in its Aug. 1,1908, edition that he arrived in Benton on Aug. 1, 1868, with his family. He kept returning on the same day for those past 40 years to look at where he got off the train at the end of the tracks.
“I had no intention of remaining there any longer than would be necessary to turn a hundred head of fat beef cattle into money, as the place possessed no attractions for myself and my family,” he told the paper. “I thought of returning to Colorado or Kansas and settling down on a farm. But here I am yet, with 10 miles of old Benton.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
