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Aaron Manke
Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Drive across America and you'll find a landscape haunted by the past. Off lonely stretches of highway, there are ghost towns that went suddenly boom and bust or that just dried up like desert sand. Many are no more than a mile marker with an unusual name like Fail Town, Alabama, or Zyzac's California. And the state of Texas has no shortage of bizarrely named ghost towns of their own. Kaput, turpentine, even bucksnort. But take a drive through hill country in central Texas, and you just might stumble on an odd little ghost town with an even odder name. We're talking, of course, about Blowout, Texas. A group of settlers from Kentucky reportedly set up shop in the area way back in 1854. Comanche Creek flowed nearby, providing fresh, clean water for cooking and irrigation. But farming wasn't the primary reason they chose the area. Instead, it was the bats. This area of the Texas hill country is dotted with caves, the perfect home for millions of Mexican free tailed bats. Even today, the creatures practically black out the sunset when they emerge from their caves at dusk. You can only imagine what it must have looked like back in 1854, when there were barely any people nearby. And where there's millions of bats, there's millions of pounds of guano. Bat feces, also called guano, is a hugely valuable natural fertilizer. It kills dangerous fungi and is rich in nitrogen, which crops need to thrive. So when the settlers founded a town in the center of all these caves, they were sitting on a very smelly gold mine. They began collecting guano from a nearby cave and packaging it to sell as fertilizer all throughout Hill Country. This business enterprise was going well until a sudden storm rolled in sometime in the 1860s. While bat guano is rich in nitrogen, it's also rich in flammable compounds. And decades of guano building up and decomposing in the same cave produces a heck of a lot of methane gas. So when a lightning bolt struck the cave, the whole thing went sky high. The explosion blew a hole into the mounds of guano inside the cave and was loud and bright enough to be seen for miles. The nearby residents didn't yet have a name for their small settlement, but they did have a sense of Humor. And so Blowout, Texas, was born. The community, built on bat guano, continued to grow throughout the late 1800s. By 1875, it had several businesses and even opened its own post office. But Blowout didn't really blow up until 1896. That year, a local rancher by the name of Frank Lacey was kneeling by a creek when he noticed something glimmering in the water. He reached in and retrieved a small flake of metal. When he rubbed the creek mud off of it, the shine was unmistakable. He had found gold. Miners rushed to town and began panning around the clock. With them came more settlers and more business. The town even grew big enough for its first real scandal, gaining them a mention in the Galveston daily News. A mail carrier was caught stealing money from the town's mail and was jailed for postal tampering. But just as fast as the boom started, it sputtered to a stop. Despite all the people panning for gold or digging mineshafts, the ground was not giving up its treasures. It seemed there wasn't any rich deposit in Blowout, just a few scattered pockets of gold flakes. As the gold rush dried up, so, too did the town. By 1918, the post office closed, and Blowout was taken off the postal route. And the last few residents left either in cars or in coffins. And Blowout faded into the dust of the hill country. Today, all that remains of Blowout, Texas, are a few scattered markers. There are some foundations, and the post office is somehow still standing. And, of course, there are the bats. They were there before Blowout existed, and I'm willing to bet that they'll be there long after it completely fades from memory. Even so, it's certainly an interesting legacy that all this came from one group of settlers in 1854 who thought the sweet, sweet smell of success stank like a lot of bat poop. In January of 1945, an army plane touched down in Kansas City, Missouri. This was not so unusual. At the time, the state was home to an airfield and an army base. But this flight wasn't carrying any soldiers or prisoners. In fact, it was carrying only one man. He was the vice president of the United States, Harry S. Truman. Although he grew up in Missouri and began his career there, this wasn't a typical social call. Once landed, he drove from the airport to his ultimate destination, a church. Inside, he found a family in mourning. He greeted a few of the people there and then made his way to the casket. Inside was a large man with a round face. Harry would have recognized his drooping jowls and big nose anywhere. It was Tom Pendergast, the man who had made him vice president back in 1922. Harry had been the struggling owner of a haberdashery. He had survived World War I being placed in command of an artillery regiment. Harry ran the regiment with precision, forcing his men to always stay alert and do everything by the book. This ensured that when they did take fire, they always made it out alive. But what had it all been for if it was Harry's fate to just return to Kansas City and not be able to earn a living? Cue the arrival of his old army buddy, Mike Pendergast, who entered the store one day and offered Harry a job. You see, Mike's older brother Tom was the boss of the local Democrat political machine. He was looking to spread his influence to the rural parts of the country and needed a candidate to run for county judge. Mike remembered how Harry conducted himself in the war and thought that he would fit the bill. This was quite the dilemma for Harry. He needed the work. He wasn't making any money at the haberdashery, and he had a wife to support. But Tom Pendergast had a reputation. He owned all the local saloons and gambling parlors. And some people said that when it came time to vote, Tom's candidates always seemed to receive more votes than there were voters. But Harry was prepared to write this off as rumor. He needed the work. And Mike always seemed like a good guy. His brother couldn't be that bad. So Harry ran for county judge that year. With Tom's money and endorsement, he won, beginning a historic political career. But right away, he surprised the Pendergasts when he refused to favor them with his political power. Jackson county was in need of new roads, and the Pentaghasts wanted their construction company to get the contract. But Harry believed in running everything above board. As the county judge, he awarded the road contracts to the lowest bidder, saving the taxpayers money. But this also meant that the Pendergasts barely profited. The taxpayers came to trust Harry so much that they approved several bonds that were used to support the local school district and other public projects. By 1931, when the great Depression was in full effect, Harry had raised enough taxpayer money to where Kansas City was able to take full advantage of President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration funding. The wpa, as it was called, required a city to pay for the majority of any project that took federal funds. Now, you would think that Tom Pendergast would be angry, but as it turns out, having a candidate who actually does a good job is just as useful as having a candidate that gives you special favors. You don't have to buy legitimate votes. By 1934, Tom was able to get Harry elected to the United States Senate, now representing Missouri and the Pendergasts at a national level. In 1944, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for president for a fourth time, the Democrat Party, including Tom Pendergast, selected Harry to be his running mate. They won the election and Harry became vice president. But Tom's history of running afoul of the law finally caught up with him in 1939 when he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for tax evasion. So you can see why in 1945 when Tom passed away, Harry's Democratic colleagues in Washington didn't want him to attend the funeral. But Harry went anyway. Even though Tom had been a criminal, he had also put Harry in a position to do a lot of good. As Harry later said at the funeral, he was always my friend and I have always been his. It's a shame that Harry's friend didn't live just a few more weeks. If he had, he would have seen the county judge from Missouri become President of the United States. But that, my friends, is another story. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities Podcast. The show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series and television show and you can learn all about it over@theworldoflore.com and until next time, stay curious.