Oct. 20, 2011 - Nearly every frontier town worth its salt in sin had a section of town known as Hell's Half Acre. San Antonio had one, as did rowdy Tascosa. In Austin, the red light district was known as Guy Town. Waco had a part of town known as the Reservation, where all the vices were on full display, but segregated from the more respectable neighborhoods.
The most famous -- or infamous -- of the Hell's Half Acres in Texas was the one in Fort Worth. Situated at the south end of town, its row upon row of saloons, gambling halls and bawdy houses were the first sights to greet cowboys sauntering into town after months on the cattle trail. Some of the cowboys probably never got to see what the rest of town had to offer, not after they got paid and turned loose in that underworld of sin, though vice be found in nearly every other part of the city as well.
Such a place as Hell's Half Acre is going to have its secrets and a key to its survival is how well it can keep those secrets without asking a lot of questions. Secrecy and privacy are of upmost importance to fugitives, outlaws and criminals of all stripes and Hell's Half Acre offered these and other amenities to roving outlaws.
We probably don't hear a lot about some of the frontier outlaws who frequented Fort Worth because most of them were usually on their best behavior when they were in Cowtown. Even someone who lives a life of crime -- or maybe especially such a person -- needs to get away from work every now and then. The outlaws and fugitives went to the Acre not necessarily to obey the law, but to get away from it and not break it again in a serious way until they ran out of money and/or time.
Being a lawman in such a town and having legal authority in the Acre called for somebody who was good at breaking the law, including the one that prohibits killing people. It called for somebody like Timothy Isaiah "Longhair" Courtright, who had hair down to his shoulders, in the manner of the buffalo hunter he used to be. He wore two six shooters and holstered them butt-forward. Gunfight scholars have suggested that he was among the fastest on the draw of any gunfighter of that era, but he ultimately finished second in a classic fast-draw contest with gambler and gunman Luke Short.
Sam Bass, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and many other major league and minor league criminals and gunfighters also made their way to Fort Worth at one time or another during the Acre's heyday. That includes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who are not usually associated with Texas because, like many of the others -- excluding Luke Short -- they kept very low profiles in the Acre.
Butch, Sundance and two other members of the gang were in Fort Worth in 1900, after robbing a bank in Winnemucca, Nev., a job that shows as much as anything else how uncertain a life of crime can be. On the way in to rob the bank one of the members, Will Carver, encountered a skunk and finished second in a "shootout" with the skunk. Witnesses remembered Carver's smell more vividly than the guns they brandished.
At some point in Fort Worth, flush with the loot from their latest jobs, they decided to buy derbies and dress clothes and pose for a photograph, which later was used on wanted posters for the men and eventually led to the gang's demise. As Richard Selser noted in his book on Hell's Half Acre for TCU Press, the last time the gang was together, except in legend and history, was in Fort Worth.
"It is unfortunate that Fort Worth could never adopt Butch and Sundance as genuine hometown heroes, but the primary evidence for their connection is too scanty." But he added that the events "provide a fitting end to the heyday of Hell's Half Acre and close out the frontier era in the city's history."
The Progressive Era, which championed a more wholesome way of living and the outlawing of vice in all its forms, helped shut down the gambling parlors and bawdy houses. Eventually, even booze would be outlawed altogether. In such a world there was no place for a half acre of Hell, or so it seemed at the time.
