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What a Blowout · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Drive across America and you'll find a landscape haunted by
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  Speaker 1: the past. Off lonely stretches of highway. There are ghost
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  Speaker 1: towns that went suddenly boom and bust, or that just
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  Speaker 1: dried up like desert sand. Many are no more than
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  Speaker 1: a mile marker with an unusual name, like filed Town, Alabama,
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  Speaker 1: or Isaacs, California. And the state of Texas has no
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  Speaker 1: shortage of bizarrely named ghost towns of the rhwont Turpentine,
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  Speaker 1: even bucksnort But take a drive through hill country in
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  Speaker 1: central Texas and you just might stumble on an odd
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  Speaker 1: little ghost town with an even odder name. We're talking,
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  Speaker 1: of course, about Blowout, Texas. A group of settlers from
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  Speaker 1: Kentucky reportedly set up shop in the area way back
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty four. Comanche Creek flowed nearby providing fresh,
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  Speaker 1: clean water for cooking and irrigation. But farming wasn't the
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  Speaker 1: primary reason they chose the area. Instead, it was the bats.
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  Speaker 1: This area of the Texas Hill Country is dotted with caves,
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  Speaker 1: the perfect home for millions of Mexican free tailed bats.
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  Speaker 1: Even today, the creatures practically black out the sunset when
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  Speaker 1: they emerge from their caves at dusk. You can only
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  Speaker 1: imagine what it must have looked like back in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: fifty four, when there were barely any people nearby. And
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  Speaker 1: where there's millions of bats, there's millions of pounds of guano.
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  Speaker 1: Bat feces, also called guano, is a hugely valuable natural fertilizer.
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  Speaker 1: It kills dangerous fungui and is rich nitrogen, which crops
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  Speaker 1: need to thrive. So when the settlers founded a town
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  Speaker 1: in the center of all these caves, they were sitting
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  Speaker 1: on a very smelly gold mine. They began collecting guano
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  Speaker 1: from a nearby cave and packaging it to sell as
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  Speaker 1: fertilizer all throughout hill country. This business enterprise was going
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  Speaker 1: well until a sudden storm rolled in sometime in the
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  Speaker 1: eighteen sixties. While batguano is rich in nitrogen, It's also
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  Speaker 1: rich inflammable compounds, and decades of guano building up and
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  Speaker 1: decomposing in the same cave produces a heck of a
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  Speaker 1: lot of methane gas, so when a lightning bolt struck
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  Speaker 1: the cave, the whole thing went sky high. The explosion
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  Speaker 1: blew a hole into the mounds of guano inside the cave,
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  Speaker 1: and was loud and bright enough to be seen for miles.
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  Speaker 1: The nearby residents didn't yet have a name for their
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  Speaker 1: small settlement, but they did have a sense of humor,
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  Speaker 1: and so Blowout, Texas was born. The community built on
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  Speaker 1: bat guano continued to grow throughout the late eighteen hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: By eighteen seventy five, it had several businesses and even
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  Speaker 1: opened its own post office. But Blowout didn't really blow
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  Speaker 1: up until eighteen ninety six. That year, a local rancher
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  Speaker 1: by the name of Frank Lacy was kneeling by a
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  Speaker 1: creek when he noticed something glimmering in the water. He
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  Speaker 1: reached in and retrieved a small flake of metal. When
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  Speaker 1: he rubbed the creek mud off of it, the shine
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  Speaker 1: was unmistakable. He had found gold. Miners rushed to town
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  Speaker 1: and began panning around the clock. With them came more
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  Speaker 1: settlers and more business. The town even grew big enough
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  Speaker 1: for its first real scandal, gaining them a mention in
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  Speaker 1: the Galveston Daily News. A mail carrier was caught stealing
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  Speaker 1: money from the town's mail and was jailed for postal tampering.
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  Speaker 1: But just as fast as the boom started, it sputtered
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  Speaker 1: to a stop. Despite all the people panning for gold
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  Speaker 1: or digging mine shafts, the ground was not giving up
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  Speaker 1: its treasures. It seemed. There wasn't any rich deposit in Blowout,
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  Speaker 1: just a few scattered pockets of gold flakes. As the
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  Speaker 1: gold rush dried up, so too did the town. By
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, the post office closed and Blowout was taken
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  Speaker 1: off the postal route, and the last few residents left
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  Speaker 1: either in cars or in coffins, and Blowout faded into
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  Speaker 1: the dust of the hill country. Today, all that remains
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  Speaker 1: of Blowout, Texas are a few scattered markers. There are
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  Speaker 1: some foundations, and the post office is somehow still standing.
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  Speaker 1: And of course there are the bats. They were there
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  Speaker 1: before Blowout existed, and I'm willing to bet that they'll
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  Speaker 1: be there long after it completely fades from memory. Even so,
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  Speaker 1: It's certainly an interesting legacy that all this came from
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  Speaker 1: one group of settlers in eighteen fifty four who thought
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  Speaker 1: the sweet, sweet smell of success stink like a lot
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  Speaker 1: of batpoop. In January of nineteen forty five, an army
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  Speaker 1: plane touchdown in Kansas City, Missouri. This was not so
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  Speaker 1: unusual at the time. The state was home to an
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  Speaker 1: airfield and an army base. But this flight wasn't carrying
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  Speaker 1: any soldiers or prisoners. In fact, it was carrying only
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  Speaker 1: one man. He was the Vice President of the United States,
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  Speaker 1: Harry S. Truman. Although he grew up in Missouri and
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  Speaker 1: began his career there, this wasn't a typical social call.
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  Speaker 1: Once landed, he drove from the airport to his ultimate destination,
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  Speaker 1: a church. Inside he found a family in mourning. He
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  Speaker 1: greeted a few of the people there, and then made
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  Speaker 1: his way to the casket. Inside was a large man
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  Speaker 1: with a round face. Harry would have recognized his drooping
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  Speaker 1: jowls and big nose anywhere. It was Tom Pendergast, the
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  Speaker 1: man who had made him vice president back in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty two. Harry had been the struggling owner of a habdasherie.
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  Speaker 1: He had survived World War One being placed in command
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  Speaker 1: of an artillery regiment. Harry ran the regiment with precision,
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  Speaker 1: forcing his men to always stay alert and do everything
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  Speaker 1: by the book. This ensured that when they did take fire,
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  Speaker 1: they always made it out alive. But what had it
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  Speaker 1: all been for if it was Harry's fate to just
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  Speaker 1: return to Kansas City and not be able to earn
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  Speaker 1: a living. Q the arrival of his old army buddy,
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  Speaker 1: Mike Pendergast, who entered the store one day and offered
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  Speaker 1: Harry a job. You see, Mike's older brother, Tom was
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  Speaker 1: the boss of the local Democrat political machine. He was
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  Speaker 1: looking to spread his influence to the rural parts of
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  Speaker 1: the country and needed a candidate to run for county judge.
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  Speaker 1: Mike remembered how Harry conducted himself in the war and
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  Speaker 1: thought that he would fit the bill. This was quite
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  Speaker 1: the dilemma for Harry. He needed the work. He wasn't
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  Speaker 1: making any money at the Habitasherie and he had a
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  Speaker 1: wife to support. But Tom Pendergast had a reputation. He
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  Speaker 1: owned all the local saloons and gambling parlors, and some
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  Speaker 1: people said that When it came time to vote, Tom's
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  Speaker 1: candidates always seemed to receive more votes than there were voters,
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  Speaker 1: but Harry was prepared to write this off as rumor.
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  Speaker 1: He needed the work, and Mike always seemed like a
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  Speaker 1: good guy. His brother couldn't be that bad. So Harry
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  Speaker 1: ran for county judge that year. With Tom's money and endorsement.
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  Speaker 1: He won, beginning a historic political career, but right away
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  Speaker 1: he surprised the Pendergasts when he refused to favor them
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  Speaker 1: with his political power. Jackson County was in need of
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  Speaker 1: new roads, and the penter Gaests wanted their construction company
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  Speaker 1: to get the contract, but Harry believed in running everything
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  Speaker 1: above board. As the county judge. He awarded the road
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  Speaker 1: contracts to the lowest bidder, saving the taxpayers money, but
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  Speaker 1: this also meant that the pender Gaests barely profited. The
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  Speaker 1: taxpayers came to trust Harry so much that they approved
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  Speaker 1: several bonds that were used to support the local school
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  Speaker 1: district and other public projects. By nineteen thirty one, when
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  Speaker 1: the Great Depression was in full effect, Harry had raised
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  Speaker 1: enough taxpayer money to where Kansas City was able to
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  Speaker 1: take full advantage of President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration funding.
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  Speaker 1: The WPA, as it was called, required a city to
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  Speaker 1: pay for the majority of any project that took federal funds. Now,
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  Speaker 1: you would think that Tom Pendergan Guest would be angry,
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  Speaker 1: but as it turns out, having a candidate who actually
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  Speaker 1: does a good job is just as useful as having
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  Speaker 1: a candidate that gives you special favors. You don't have
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  Speaker 1: to buy legitimate votes. By nineteen thirty four, Tom was
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  Speaker 1: able to get Harry elected to the United States Senate,
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  Speaker 1: now representing Missouri, and the pender Guests at a national level.
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  Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for
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  Speaker 1: president for a fourth time, the Democrat Party, including Tom
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  Speaker 1: pender Guest, selected Harry to be his running mate. They
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  Speaker 1: won the election, and Harry became Vice president. But Tom's
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  Speaker 1: history of running a foul of the law finally caught
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  Speaker 1: up with him in nineteen thirty nine when he was
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  Speaker 1: sentenced to fifteen months in prison for tax evasion. So
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  Speaker 1: you can see why in nineteen forty five, when Tom
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  Speaker 1: passed away, Harry's Democratic colleagues in Washington didn't want him
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  Speaker 1: to attend the funeral. But Harry went anyway. Even though
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  Speaker 1: Tom had been a criminal, he had also put Harry
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  Speaker 1: in a position to do a lot of good. As
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  Speaker 1: Harry later said at the funeral, he was always my
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  Speaker 1: friend and I have always been his. It's a shame
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  Speaker 1: that Harry's friend didn't live just a few more weeks.
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  Speaker 1: If he had, he would have seen the county judge
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  Speaker 1: from Missouri become President of the United States. But that,
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  Speaker 1: my friends, is another story. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldolore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.