In a literal sense, it was larger than the “half acre” of its name. In a figurative sense, it was smaller than the legends that survive it. Sam Bass and his gang hid out in it. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid visited it. City Marshal Timothy Isaiah “Longhaired Jim” Courtright was ordered to tame it. J. Frank Norrispreached sermons about it.
It was Hell’s Half Acre, and for more than thirty years it was a sin-and-gin model of supply and demand, a two-fisted, pistol-packin’, hard-drinkin’, easy-lovin’ veritable mall of vice that reduced “greenhorns” to empty-pocketed drunks and reduced reformers to tears.
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