When Kahlotus was home to 200 dancehall girls

You wouldn't call Kahlotus any metropolis, nestled as it is with its half-a-hundred inhabitants among the foothills of northeast Franklin County. But the vest pocket farm hamlet is a lot more civilized today than it was 67 years ago when George Harter hove onto the scene. From a sidetracked boxcar in the late 1880's, Harter saw Kahlotus grow to a bustling construction town in the early 1900's when the SP & S Railway was building a train tunnel nearby. After the tunnel was built, Harter stayed around to see his town become a crossroads trade center for cattle ranchers and wheat farmers, a status it still enjoys. He calls 1908 the peak year of population, but adds it was far from civilized even then. “That is,” he said, “Unless you'd call a gang of hard drinking Swede tunnel workers civilized.” Wide-open saloons and 200 freewheeling dancehall girls quartered locally didn't add to the refinement much either, to hear Harter tell it. 7Things were prosperous though with that railroad payroll coming in regular. Harter said they had every kind of gambling game on God's green earth going the clock around. He and Mrs. Harter had occasion four years ago to recall one incident that happened at the First and Last Chance Saloon in 1908. Ten Swedes and their foreman rode into town from Windust on a handcar one night for a weekend spree. And, as Harter remembers, they started to celebrate at the First and Last Chance. Harter's barn now sits where the saloon was once situated. Fearing his hands would spend all their wages; the frugal tunnel boss took most of their cash and cached it under a sagebrush behind the saloon. “Wouldn't you know it,” said Harter, “The boss ended up getting the drunkest of all and forgot which sagebrush he'd hid it under...more