What a Blowout

dried up like desert sand. Many are no more than a mile marker with an unusual name, like filed Town, Alabama, or Isaacs, California. And the state of Texas has no shortage of bizarrely named ghost towns of the rhwont 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 eighteen fifty four. 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 eighteen fifty four, 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 fungui and is rich 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 eighteen sixties. While batguano is rich in nitrogen, It's also rich inflammable 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 eighteen hundreds. By eighteen seventy five, it had several businesses and even

opened its own post office. But Blowout didn't really blow up until eighteen ninety six. That year, a local rancher by the name of Frank Lacy 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 mine shafts, 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 nineteen eighteen, 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 eighteen fifty four who thought the sweet, sweet smell of success stink like a lot of batpoop. In January of nineteen forty five, an army plane touchdown 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 nineteen twenty two. Harry had been the struggling owner of a habdasherie. He had survived World War One 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. Q 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 Habitasherie 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 penter Gaests 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 pender Gaests 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 nineteen thirty one, 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 Pendergan Guest 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 nineteen thirty four, Tom was able to get Harry elected to the United States Senate, now representing Missouri, and the pender Guests at a national level.

In nineteen forty four, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for president for a fourth time, the Democrat Party, including Tom pender Guest, selected Harry to be his running mate. They won the election, and Harry became Vice president. But Tom's history of running a foul of the law finally caught up with him in nineteen thirty nine when he was

sentenced to fifteen months in prison for tax evasion. So you can see why in nineteen forty five, 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 dot com. The show was created by

me Aaron Mankey 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 at the Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.