Structural Elements of Westerns

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

An analysis of Western films discloses the use of a number of specific types of scenic elements that tend to recur frequently in such movies. The order in which these scenic elements occurs may differ, and not all may be present in a film, although, typically, many, if not all, do tend to appear. In addition, each scenic element can be shown by itself or in combination with another (for example, an offer of a bounty may be accepted or rejected, earned or lost). Scenic elements that occur in all the movies analyzed below are indicated by bold font.

 

In Tombstone (1993), these scenic elements occur in this order:

Despicable deed: An action, usually criminal, that is beyond the pale, even for outlaws

Relocation

Reunion

Health problem

Character flaw

Stake: A source of income, often temporary

Murder

Arrest

Law enforcement

Gunfight

Ambush

Retaliation

Refuge: a place of safety

Challenge

Substitution: the replacement of an expected or intended character or object with an unexpected replacement

Showdown

Vendetta: protracted revenge against several parties

Marriage

 

In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), these scenic elements occur in this order:

Interrogation: formal or informal, legal or otherwise

Murder

Surrender to authorities: of oneself or one's prisoner

Rescue

Abandonment

Revenge

Duplicity: often as a means of double-dealing or double-crossing

Reunion

Capture

Escape

Sabotage

Intelligence: information gained through personal observation, primary sources, or secondary sources

Robbery

Rescue

In The War Wagon (1967), these scenic elements occur in this order:

Relocation

Revenge

Intelligence

Hiring of expert(s)

Robbery

Rescue

Offer of bounty

Drunkenness

Negotiation

Intervention

Diversion

Theft

Forced detour

Division of forces

Drunkenness

Ambush

Murder

Crash

 

In True Grit (1969), these scenic elements occur in this order:

Murder

Robbery

Hiring of expert(s)

Pursuit

Tracking of fugitive(s)

Partnership

Attempted abandonment

Discovery: information gained through a character's own action, rather than those of another party or from a primary or secondary source

Capture

Interrogation

Defiance

Attempted ambush

Feint

Gunfight

Death: loss of life due to a natural cause or a justified killing, as opposed to murder

Escape

Pursuit

Wounding

Kidnapping

Ultimatum

Attack

Injury

Snakebite

Commandeering of civilian vehicle

Payment

Promise

Wager

As this partial analysis of the recurring types of scenic elements common to Western films shows, such movies frequently use the same scenic elements, despite the dramatic details of their plots. A writer who is interested in writing a Western novel or screenplay can use these same scenic elements to construct a plot based on a structure that has stood the test of time.

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Don't miss these other great books in the exciting Adventure of the Old West series!

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  Bane Messenger Bounty Hunter

(A novella prequel to the series)

Available at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo

(e-book format)

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A prequel to the series An Adventure of the Old West, this action-packed short story introduces Bane Messenger, a Union veteran of the Civil War, who teams with former Confederate commander Colonel Jake Miller to become a bounty hunter.

On the trail of a vicious outlaw wanted for kidnapping and murder during a series of robberies, Bane hones his tracking, reconnaissance, and fighting skills.

His final showdown with his deadly quarry will show Bane just how good he is with a gun and launch his career as a man who makes a living by bringing killers to justice, dead or alive.

 

Good with a Gun

(Book 1 of the series)

Available at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo

(e-book format)

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Bounty hunter Bane Messenger is good with a gun, but he wants more out of life than hunting down fugitives from the law. He wants a wife and children. He wants a home of his own. He wants to know why his father abandoned his mother and him. 

But all he knows is how to track and capture or kill the worst sort of men who roam the West, taking what they want, whether money, property, or women, at the point of a gun.

When he meets the right woman, though, he vows his life will change; he will change, if he can. 

 

The Valley of the Shadow

(Book 2 of the series)

Available at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo

(e-book format)

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Mysterious strangers. Big money. Corrupt politicians. Murder. Mayhem. Hired guns. After a drunk is broken out of Excelsior, Nevada's, jailhouse, former bounty hunter Bane Messenger joins a posse to hunt down the escaped prisoner and his accomplices.

Surviving an ambush in which the sheriff and deputy are killed, Bane tracks down the assassins. But, when he returns to Excelsior, he finds that the town's last lawman has also been murdered. Now, a cartel controls the town, using paid gunmen to enforce new laws for their own benefit.

Determined to bring law and order back to his hometown, Bane faces a fierce fight only guns can settle, but he learns there's more to enforcing justice than just being good with a gun.

 

Blood Mountain

(Book 3 of the series)

Available at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo

(e-book format)

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After years as a bounty hunter and a sheriff, Bane Messenger wants to enjoy a quiet life with his family. They buy land in Nevada's Great Basin, planning to build a remote family retreat, but when they visit the property, armed men attack them, intent upon forcing them to vacate the premises, claiming Bane and his family are trespassing on private property.

Before this new nightmare ends, Bane will strike it rich, be tried for kidnapping and murder, and take on an “army” of veteran soldiers determined to kill him and his entire family.

On the Track of Vengeance 

(Book 4 of the series)

Available at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo

(e-book format)

Click HERE to order from your favorite retailer. 

The runaway action never stops in On the Track of Vengeance, the fourth book in An Adventure of the Old West series. When outlaw gangs sabotage railroads, resulting in the deaths of innocent passengers and crew members, the president of the United States becomes directly involved, appointing Bane Messenger a U. S. marshal answerable to him alone.

Teamed with trustworthy deputies, Bane takes on the desperate men, who care only for vengeance and are willing to do anything to strike back at the railroads and the government they blame for their misfortunes. But the stakes soar when Bane learns that the outlaws plan to sabotage a train carrying his wife and father.

With their lives hanging in the balance and no way to warn them, Bane races to the scene. Can he stop the outlaws in time or will Pamela and Bradford become the latest victims of the cruel men who care for nothing but vengeance?

The Wild West's Nevada Bordellos

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Our review of some of Nevada's Wild West towns along Highway 50 and Interstate 80 reveal some of the motives westward travelers and frontier settlers had in migrating from points east. Watering holes and bodies of water along overland trails (like the existence of the trails themselves); the building of the Transcontinental Railroad; discoveries of silver, gold, lead, and other ores; and politics brought men, women, and children west, where the frontier seemed a land of possibilities and, perhaps, for some, wealth, as well as adventure.

We can pretty well guess why prostitution was widespread throughout the West. There were few women and lots of men. The law of supply and demand made brothels lucrative business ventures—for their owners, at least—and provided employment for women, which was scarce on the frontier. There were, after all, only so much demand for laundresses, schoolmarms, seamstresses, store clerks, waitresses, and the like, and, aside from these occupations, respectable women had few options. Sometimes, a woman became a “soiled dove” simply because she had no other alternative.

 

Today, Donna's Ranch continues to cater to its clientele.Source: Yelp

What else can we discern by investigating some of the brothels known to have existed in Nevada during the nineteenth century? A fairly well documented establishment of this type was Donna's Ranch in Wells. During its Wild West heyday, this bordello, which has been in operation since 1867, had two major types of clients: the men constructing the Central Pacific Railroad and the cowboys who drove herds to the railroad's cattle-boarding locations and sometimes paid for the prostitutes' services with cows in lieu of dollars. Its more recent owners have included heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey (1895-1983).

 The Desert Club's contemporary look. Source: Desert Club Girls

 The Desert Club, a Battle Mountain brothel that first opened its doors in the late 1800s, includes only five rooms. It's back in business, having reopened under new management in 2016, after closing in 1991, having been temporarily transformed into a mining museum during the interim. Unfortunately, nothing much is known about its operations during its frontier days.

 

The whips on the wall of a bedroom at today's Rainey's Dance Hall (now Big Four) provide unique decor. Source: booked.net

 

 Rainey's Dance Hall was open for business beginning in the late 1800s. As Big Four, it still operates in Ely, Nevada, but, of course, under new ownership. It has in common with the Desert Club the fact that little remains known of its glory days.

The Pussycat Ranch (aka Pussycat Saloon, aka Pussycat Brothel) once stood on Riverside Street in Winnemucca, but it has since not only close but been demolished. In its flower, the Pussycat boasted a large, ornate bar, among its other diversions.

The Cosmopolitan, presumably, has seen better days. Source: nevadaadventures.com

Located in Belmont, the Cosmopolitan Saloon satisfied the needs of his clientele during the latter half of the 1800s. The July 27, 1874, edition of the Belmont Courier's June 27, 1874, noted that the law provided the means by which to quickly suppress such business enterprises and suggested that local government officials had the moral duty to do so. Such a “hurdy dance house,” the paper proclaimed was “a moral wrong,” if ever there was one, injurious to young and old alike, should they succumb to the establishment's “alluring temptations.”

The Cosmopolitan was a dangerous place to visit because of the gunfire that sometimes occurred on the premises as well, the article noted, although, admittedly, recent shootings had not resulted in any fatalities. Should a death occur as the result of such irresponsible conduct, however, the Courier reckoned that the county was likely to bear a cost of “$3,000 to $10,000 to prosecute the case.”

In commenting on the Courier's article, in “Hurdy houses, hurdy girls flourished in boom towns,” an installment in the Pahrump Valley Times's series of articles concerning Nevada's “history of prostitution,” the author, historian Bob McCracken, points out that “prostitutes were among the first arrivals in a mining boom town” and that they were held in esteem by men, who “generally saw them as tough and resourceful, passionate and fun-loving people with big hearts who provided an essential human service.”

 Belmont, Nevada. Source: Pinterest

Among the other bordellos that the article mentions is the Crook Shop. Regarding this establishment, McCracken reports on the double standard of the times regarding men, women, and prostitution. Men who availed themselves of “hurdy girls” might retain their respectability; the prostitutes, on the other hand, who were guilty of the same risque behavior, were regarded as disgraceful:

“It was noted that a woman who danced in the Crook Shop (a local brothel) was not admitted to a 'respectable party' while the man who danced with the 'hurdy-gurdy girl' suffered no diminished in respectability. Why should that be, the item asked: 'If there is any difference between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, we confess our ignorance' (Belmont Courier, June 27, 1874).”

  Hurdy gurdy girl. Source: hurdygurdyanthropology.
 

Note: Most historians make a distinction between "hurdy gurdy girls," German frauleins who played the hurdy gurdy and danced with men for a price (usually fifty cents per dance and another fifty cents for the couple's drinks) and "soiled doves" who entertained their clients in a much more "intimate" manner.

Western Towns Along Nevada's Interstate 80

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Although Nevada isn't always the first state that pops into the thoughts of Western readers, its history, like that of other states west of the Mississippi, is replete with a colorful past directly related to the settlement of this vast frontier.

 

Source: Wikipedia

Traveling from east to west along Interstate 80, we encounter Wells, Deeth, Halleck, Elko, Golconda, Winnemucca, Oreana, Lovelock, Reno, and Verdi, many of which appear as settings in On the Track of Vengeance, the fourth book of my series An Adventure of the Old West.

 Source: Wikipedia

 

 Source: Amazon

 

Wells was settled in the 1850s, when it was known as Humboldt Wells, taking its name from the nearby river and springs of the same name and, possibly, from its position at the head of the Humboldt Trail. Situated along the future routes of the Transcontinental Railroad, as a rest stop for railroad passengers, the site caught fire toward the close of the nineteenth century. Seeking assistance, the message "Wells is burning" was telegraphed, which event led to the shortening of the name to simply "Wells."

Source: Pinterest

The telegraph followed the Transcontinental Railroad. In 1869, a branch line station including telegraph service was built near Deeth, Nevada, a rural area through which the Central Pacific Railroad ran. Six years later, a post office was constructed to serve local ranches and farms, and a town began to take shape. Mining also attracted newcomers, and the fledgling community, named for a local pioneer, soon boasted a Mormon chapel, stables for horses, merchants' stores, a blacksmith, and, of course, the inevitable saloons. In fact, Deeth became a cattle shipping point and a trading center for ranchers in the vicinity of the town.

Source: Wikipedia
 

Established in 1867, Camp Halleck, named in honor of U. S. Army Major General Henry Wager Halleck, protected the California Trail and Central Pacific Railroad workers until 1879. Two years after the camp opened, the town of Halleck was built as a shipping point for supplies bound for the military post.

Among the town's buildings were two hotels and a saloon, the patrons of which were often soldiers stationed at the nearby military installation. In 1874, both a store and a school opened, the latter continuing to educate the townspeople's children until the 1950s. The camp developed into Fort Halleck, but its abandonment in 1886 led to the town's decline.

 Source: Elko Daily Free Press 

The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad across Nevada also led to the 1868 settlement of Elko at the east end of the California Trail. After the railroad's construction, Elko persisted as a shipping center for ranching, mining, rail freight, and sundry other supplies.

 Sourve: Wikipedia

Named after Golkonda, the diamond mining district in India, Nevada's Golconda, founded in 1869, grew up around mines that produced copper, silver, gold, and lead. Home to French, Portuguese, Paiute, and Chinese residents, the town, by the first decade of the twentieth century, boasted a train depot, a few hotels, a school, various business establishments, newspapers, and two bordellos. However, after the ores were exhausted, the town declined.

 

 Chief Winnemucca

Source: Pinterest

For Western fans, Winnemucca has several claims to fame. It is named after nineteenth-century Chief Winnemucca, of the North Paiute tribe, whose members occupied a nearby camp. The town was situated along the Central Pacific Railroad's portion of the Transcontinental Railroad. On September 19, 1900, Butch Cassidy's gang robbed the First National Bank of Winnemucca of $32,640. The town is also home to the Buckaroo Hall of Fame and Heritage Museum.

In both the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, Chinese railroad workers numbered about four hundred and lived in a portion of the city known as Chinatown, which featured the Joss House on Baud Street, a visitor to which was future Chinese President Sun Yat-Sen, who was touring the United States to raise funds to help finance the Xinhai Revolution. As Tombstone's Doc Holliday might have said, Winnemucca was "very cosmopolitan," indeed.

Source: Wikipedia

Nevada mines produced so much ore of various kinds that mills were erected to process the materials. One such operation, the Montezuma Smelting Works, built in Oreana in 1857, not only smelted ores from the Arabia and Trinity mining districts, but was also the first lead smelter to ship lead commercially; others shipped their output only locally. From the 1870s through the first two-and-a-half decades of the twentieth century, Orena Station was also a stop on the Central Pacific Railroad, serving as a supply depot for Rochester mines.

Source: nevadaweb.com

 Situated halfway along the Humboldt Trail, Lovelock, or "Big Meadows," as it was originally known, was a bustling mecca of activity in 1849, with as many as two-hundred-and-fifty wagons present at times, as wagon trains came and went throughout the day and livestock, including cattle and mules, grazed in nearby fields in which settlers harvested rye. 

However, it was the silver and gold mining and the Central Pacific Railroad in particular, that gave the town a solid foundation. Now the seat of Pershing County, the town was named in honor of English settler George Lovelock's family. In addition to three newspapers, Lovelock included the Big Meadows Hotel, a train station, a school, several churches, and a thriving business district.

Source: Amazon

Gold mining plays a large part in Blood Mountain, the third action-packed novel in my series An Adventure of the Old West, when former bounty hunter and sheriff Bane Messenger discovers a gold mine on property that he and his wife Pamela just purchased, as a result encountering unscrupulous men who will do anything to get their hands on his precious ore.

Source: Wikipedia

Travel along the California Trail, the discovery of gold near Virginia City, and, most of all, the discovery of silver in 1859 at the Comstock Lode brought thousands of prospectors and miners West, many of whom sought their fortunes in and near Reno, which was founded in 1868 and incorporated in 1903.

The city was named for Major General Jesse L. Reno, a veteran of the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, a "soldier's soldier" who often fought side-by-side with his troops. Even today, Nevada remains the world's third-largest gold producer, after South Africa and Australia.

In 1868, Verdi, originally O'Neil's Crossing, was renamed by Charles Crocker, the founder of the Central Pacific Railroad. The original name of the town had honored the man who'd built a bridge there in 1860. The name change was as much a matter or chance as it was of intention, havi g resulted from Crocker's having pulled a slip of paper bearing the famous Italian opera singer's name from a hat.

 Source: Elko daily Free Press

The gateway to the Verdi Range in California, the town of Verdi was the approximate location of a train robbery in 1870. On November 4 of that year, five men blocked the track near a lumber camp in the vicinity of Verdi, causing the train, which was traveling from San Francisco to Virginia City, to stop. The robbers made off with about $40,000 of the $60,000 of gold and silver the train was carrying. The same train was robbed a second time near either Pequop or Moor, Nevada (reports differ), and the robbers escaped with about $3,000.

Western Towns Along Nevada's Highway 50

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Source: Wikipedia

Nevada, has a lot more to do with the Wild West than might be apparent to those unfamiliar with the history of “The Silver State.” The impetuses that led to the founding of its towns, large and small, often indicate their role in the settlement of that part of the great American West that lies in and about the Great Basin and its immediate environs.

Using Highway 50, “The Loneliest Road in America,” as a handy route across the state, and raveling from east to west, we chart the towns that were settled during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, appreciating, in the process, how each contributed to the civilization of the Western frontier.

 

Source: Harry Shipler

Ely, the seat of White Pine County, was founded in 1906 as a stagecoach station on the Pony Express and Ventral Overland Route. Later, with the discovery of copper in the area, which supplemented earlier gold discoveries, Ely became a mining town subject to the ups and downs of similar boom towns.

Western points of interest in Ely include the Nevada Northern Railway Museum and the East Ely Depot.

 

Source: Online Nevada

Settled in 1864, the mining town of Eureka, a source of silver and lead, proved to be the second-most productive in the state, with only the famed Comstock Lode producing more ore. Unfortunately, Eureka's mines were played out by 1878, although “The Friendliest Town on the Loneliest Road in America” survives.

The California Gold Rush is responsible for the settlement of Fallon, which became the final stop of men whose intention of joining the Forty-Niners in their search for California's gold but, instead, called it quits after crossing the Carson River. The settlement was named after local rancher Michael Fallon and his wife Eliza.

 

Wild horses near Stagecoach, Nevada. Source: YouTube.

As its name suggests, Stagecoach began as a station along the Overland Stagecoach route, which also served as a Pony Express station. Before 1857, when the Overland Stagecoach company was founded, U. S. mail was delivered to the West by way of steamers routed through Panama.

 

Source: Flickr

Of those towns on our list so far, Dayton is, in some ways, probably one of the most historic. Its original name, Ponderers Rest, recalls the pondering of travelers who rested here as they watered their animals and decided whether to follow the river southward or continue their journey to the west.

The population soared after gold was discovered at nearby Gold Creek, a Carson River tributary. To avoid California's tax, Chinese miners immigrated from the Golden State to the Silver State, and, when the Comstock Lode was discovered in 1859 and many miners traveled to Gold Hill and Virginia City to seek their fortunes, the number of Chinese workers in Dayton became great enough a year later that the settlement was renamed China Town.

It wasn't until 1861 that it was officially named Dayton, after John Day, a local surveyor who later became the Surveyor General of the United States. Thereafter, Dayton capitalized on its proximity to the Carson River by becoming the Comstock's major milling center, experiencing rapid growth. One of the “Great Fires” that occurred during the years 1866 and 1870 burned down much of the town, but Dayton survived, reduced both in size and importance, after the construction of the Carson & Colorado Railroad in 1881.

The Dayton Courthouse and the Union Hotel are among Dayton's places of interest to Western fans.

 

Source: Wikipedia

Finally, our trip west on Highway 50 brings us to Carson City. Named, in 1843, by John C. Fremont in honor of his scout Kit Carson, Carson City had its start as a Utah Territory trading post along the Carson Branch of the California Trail and was governed by Salt Lake City officials. The discovery of the Comstock Lode increased Carson City's population dramatically, and it became the seat of Ormsby County. Its Warm Springs Hotel, which has served as the territorial legislature's meeting hall, was converted into the region's first prison and remains part of this institution even today.

Nevada became a state in 1864, and Carson City became its capital. Its economic base switched from mining to commerce and railroad construction, in which Chinese workers played an enormous role. Although the building of the Central Pacific Railroad through the Donner Pass reduced Carson City's size and status, it remained an important frontier city into the twentieth century.

There are several places of interest for Western devotees, including several museums, the Stewart Indian School, the Sears-Ferris House, the Silver Saddle Ranch, the Mexican Dam, Prison Hill, and Lake Tahoe.

Mining, stagecoach lines, the Pony Express, politics, and railroads helped to settle the Western towns of Nevada, just as they helped to bring civilization to many other states of America's Wild West.

Next up: Western towns along Nevada's Interstate 80.

 

Available NOW on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited!: On the Track of Vengeance

 

The runaway action never stops in On the Track of Vengeance, the fourth book in An Adventure of the Old West series.
 
When outlaw gangs sabotage railroads, resulting in the deaths of innocent passengers and crew members, the president of the United States becomes directly involved, appointing Bane Messenger a U.S. marshal answerable to him alone.
 
Teamed with trustworthy deputies, Bane takes on the desperate men, who care only for vengeance and are willing to do anything to strike back at the railroads and the government they blame for their misfortunes.
 
But the stakes soar when Bane learns that the outlaws plan to sabotage a train carrying his wife and father. With their lives hanging in the balance and no way to warn them, Bane races to the scene. Can he stop the outlaws in time or will Pamela and Bradford become the latest victims of the cruel men who care for nothing but vengeance?

The A. B. Seelye Company: A Story of Notions, Lotions, Potions, and Riches

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

As Ann Anderson points out in Snake Oil, Hustlers and Hambones: The Anerican Medical Show, the entertainment that these carnival-style performances provided (between snake oil salesmen's product pitches) was “perfectly suited to isolated rural audiences” who enjoyed simple amusements (163). Performers included “blackface” comedians, musicians, mind readers, ventriloquists, magicians, and others (82).

Both comedies, such as the movie Poppy (1937), starring W. C. Fields, and a Walt Disney production, Alice's Medicine Show (1927). starring Lois Hardwick, and Westerns, including Little Big Man (1970), starring Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway, and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) starring Clint Eastwood.

Some members of show audiences were easily convinced, or duped into believing, that the salesmen offered the elixirs of life. Others were skeptical (as were the physicians of the day). In Western films, though, medicine shows, as might be expected, were usually played strictly for laughs.

The very phrase “snake oil” suggests chicanery. In Europe during the 1800s, rattlesnake “oil” was regarded as a cure for arthritis and rheumatism. Whether or not this is true hasn't been proved, but the question, with regard to the “medicines” said to have been derived from vipers, including rattlesnakes, is moot, since, as Laurence M. Klauber points out, in volume two, of his Rattlesnakes, it's unlikely that snake oil ever actually contained snake oil (or any parts of these vipers).

Snake oil products are also known as “patent medicines.” The National Museum of American History explains why:

Patent medicines are named after the “letters patent” granted by the English crown. The first “letters patent” given to an inventor of a secret remedy was issued during the late 17th century. The patent granted the medicine maker a monopoly over his particular formula. The term “patent medicine” came to describe all pre-packaged medicines sold “over-the-counter” without a doctor’s prescription. In the United States very few preparations were ever actually patented.

The label on the front of a bottle of Seelye's Wasa-Tusa, a medicine “For Man and Beast, Internal and External,” lists its ingredients as “63% non-beverage alcohol, 10 minims [of] sulphuric ether and 7 minims of chloroform per ounce [of] alcohol derivative.”

Like most patent medicines, it's touted as effective in the treatment of a host of maladies: “Muscular Soreness, Bruises, Strains, Sprains, Simple Headache, Simple Neuralgias, Toothache, Simple Earaches, minor Irritations of the Throat, and where a counter-irritant would be used.”

A few drops taken “internally,” with water or milk, likewise remedies “Colic and Cramps due to Gas.” The product is also “Useful for Wire Cuts, Swellings, Etc., and on Animals” and works as effectively to alleviate “Colic in Horses” as it does to relieve the same malady in humans.

Wasa-Tusa cures so many conditions and diseases that it's hard to see why anyone would ever need to buy another medicine after purchasing The A. B. Seelye Company's nostrum. Considering all the ailments from which the product provides relief, if not, indeed, a cure, it is certainly worth its $1.25 retail price.

One of the most interesting facts about Alfred Barns Seelye (December 20, 1870 - February 14, 1948) is that he took the theatrics out of snake oil sales, treating the production, marketing, and distribution of his patent medicines as a business. In addition, as we shall see, he found innovative ways to entertain his customers and potential customers. If, after the passing of the medicine show, due to its ever-increasing extravagance and attendant expenses, Seelye would bring the show to the clientele--or a semblance of it, at least. As a result, he was immensely successful for years, his customer base and profits increasing dramatically.

Seelye studied both medicine at one college and literature at another, without graduating from either. In 1890, after moving from Illinois, where he'd grown up, to the famous cowtown, Abilene, Kansas, of which Wild Bill Hickock had once been marshal, Seelye set up a laboratory and began making Wasa-Tusa, Fro-Zona, and about a hundred other concoctions.

His success was tremendous, his company growing to the point that, at the pinnacle of his success, he employed over three hundred traveling salesmen, among other workers. He had to move his operations into a larger building, which also housed his Seelye Theater, which sat an audience of eight hundred.

He married Jeanette Taylor in 1893, and the couple increased Abilene's population by two, their daughters Mary Eleanor and Helen Ruth.

Founded in 1890, in Abilene, Kansas, Seelye's company was incorporated nine years later. By 1905, its snake oil sales had made Seelye a wealthy man, indeed.

It's not hard to understand why. The company offers something for everyone—and for every ailment.

A three-ounce jar of its Fro-Zona Company ointment is a superb after-shave, its menthol, camphor, and oils (peppermint, eucalyptus, and pine), and, of course, its petroleum, constituting a “soothing preparation” for everyday use. It cools “prickly heat, sunburn, insect stings, chafing, frost bites [sic], head colds, chapped skin, nasal irritation, superficial burns, and simple headaches.”

It can be rubbed “between the eyes,” daubed up the nostrils, or dabbed “behind the ears,” preferably before “retiring at night.” Apparently, it also works on toys: the front of the product's label shows a physician making a house call to examine a little girl's doll, as he holds a jar of the panacea.

The fact that Fro-Zona is a patent medicine is indicated on the bottle by a stamped notice of the balm's registry with the U. S. Patent Office.

In promoting his medicines, Seelye is sure to offer his customers more than their money's worth. A 1903 promotional “almanac” is also a “health guide,” and the combination almanac-health guide is also a cook book—three useful publications in one. In short, the booklet contains, “besides the weather forecasts, some excellent Cooking Receipts [sic] . . . and general information, as well as a history of the Seelye Medicines and their method of cure.”

In addition, it's chock full of advertisements for his lotions, potions, and nostrums. The fifty-two-page publication promotes “Ner-Vena, Wasa-Tusa, Magic Cough and Consumption Cure, Seelye's Wintergreen Ointment, Wintergreen Soap, A. B. Seelye's Happy Life Pills, Seelye's Universal Stock and Poultry Powder, Horse Liniment, Seelye's Hair Tonic and Restorative, and other remedies.”

The brochure's “Introduction” boasts of the company's success. Business was “excellent” in 1902, and sales in 1903 promise to be no less flourishing, as the company marks its “13th year” of continual growth,” satisfied customers singing the medicines' praises as products that not only “cure folks” but also “prolong life.” The booklet is quite a bargain for free (although, should readers care to do so, they're more than welcome to send in their testimonials concerning the benefits of the company's cures).

The brochure contains many delightful, if not always informative, illustrations as well. One, labeled “The Human Body,” shows the figure of a man, lines connecting the animals of the zodiac to the various organs of the human anatomy over which these signs are said to govern: Gemini, the arms; Leo, the heart; Taurus, the neck; and so on.

The booklet contains all manner of trivia and esoteric information. In addition to the astrological associations with human anatomy, a list of religious holidays and their respective dates appears, beneath which the year's “Morning and Evening Stars” are identified.

As might be expected, advertisements and testimonials make up a substantial part of the publication, appearing either as full-page texts or as sidebars, complete with a photograph of the gentleman or lady who offers an endorsement of a particular product.

Mrs. Julia Weathers, for example, of Sedgwick, Kansas, who once suffered, it seems, from “weak nerves,” contends that “Dr. Seelye's Ner-Vena is the greatest medicine” for treating this condition that she has ever seen. “Dizzy spells” had afflicted her, causing her to “stay in bed half a day at a time,” before “three bottles” of Seelye's “remarkable remedy” remedied her condition, curing her. And that's not all! She adds, Ner-Vena also benefited her heart in some way. (She doesn't say how, exactly.) Whatever the wonderful nostrum did to help her heart, though, prompted her to declare, in no uncertain terms, “Ner-Vena was indeed a God send to me.”

These features weren't live acts, of course. There were no magicians and clowns, no ventriloquists or men on stilts, but there were interesting articles, loads of trivia, intriguing illustrations, esoteric lore, and, of course, apparently heartfelt thanks, product recommendations, and personal testimonials from satisfied customers. On the frontier, especially in rural areas far from the nearest town, the arrival of Seelye's combination almanac-health guide-cook book must have been welcome, indeed. Its pages provided escape from boredom and drudgery while acquainting its readers with the wonderful nostrums that could cure nearly any ailment known to medicine, and, best of all, it was delivered free to one's doorstep, upon request.

A help wanted advertisement in the May 15, 1902 issue of the Abilene Weekly Reflector also suggests that the company was doing well. Despite having forty employees, the company was seeking ten to twelve more salesmen and had hired the Abilene Carriage Company to build “ten new wagons” to carry products directly to the customers who ordered them.

Despite the announcement's headline, “Good Chance for Hustlers,” it seems that the newspaper found the company to be a good place to work: “Dickinson county young men need not hesitate to engage with the A. B. Seelye Medicine company as they are reliable and do well by their salesmen.”

Yes, whatever the effectiveness of its many “medicines,” The A. B. Seelye Company was good to its founder. With the fortune he earned, he built the fabulous 11,000-square-foot, twenty-five-room Seelye Mansion in Abilene, Kansas.

A beautiful home in the Georgian style, this magnificent mansion, built in 1905 for $55,000, boasts Edison light fixtures, a Tiffany fireplace, eleven bedrooms, a ballroom, a music room featuring “gold French furniture and a grand Steinway piano,” and a bowling alley. The house was also home, at one time, to Seelye's laboratory (where, it seems likely, plenty more nostrums were concocted),Seelye was even more extravagant in purchasing the mansion's elegant furniture. He bought most of it at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, paying more for it than he paid to build the house!

The bowling alley, which “was ordered at the Chicago World's Fair,” was constructed by the American Box Ball Company, Indianapolis, Indiana. It not only automatically returns the ball, but features an unusual feature: the pull of a lever resets the “drop-style pins.”

As a youngster, Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered ice to the mansion; later, of course, the boy would become Supreme Commander of the Allied forces during World War II and the president of the United States, but, for the Seelye daughters, Helen and Marion, who lived in the house following their father's demise, Ike would remain “a man from the wrong side of the tracks.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Frank Lloyd Wright

Another famous person associated with the Seelye Mansion is architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who “suggested renovated the interior” of the home in the 1920s.

Seelye's Wasa-Tusa, his Fro-Zona Company ointment, his Magic Cough and Consumption Cure, his Wintergreen Ointment, his Wintergreen Soap, his Happy Life Pills, his Universal Stock and Poultry Powder, his Horse Liniment, his Hair Tonic and Restorative, and all his other preposterous products—and his innovative and tireless efforts in promoting them—made the purveyor of dubious notions, lotions, and potions a remarkably wealthy man who lived out his life in luxury, perhaps tinkering with formulae and concocting new “medicines” right up to the end of his days.