The Ghost Town of Canyon Diablo - Exploring the Myths and Legends

today we're visiting a place that Legend has it was the most dangerous roughest town in the old west a place whose name literally means the Devil's Canyon today we're traveling to the ghost town of Canyon Diablo [Music] now I'm in Arizona on Route 66 at Twin Arrows though one of the iconic arrows did fall over in the last couple years so I guess now it could be more aptly named lone Arrow but Twin Arrows is not what we're doing today's video on today we're heading towards a ghost town that Legend has it was one of the wildest and most dangerous places in the Wild West Canyon Diablo a place where they said the first sheriff arrived at three and they were planning his funeral at eight where the cemetery ran out of space and they started burying people where they fell but is any of that true well it's about 15 miles from here so let's head to the ghost town of Canyon Diablo and talk about its history Its Real History surprisingly the arrow that fell is still laying here Twin Arrows started as a trading post but it closed sometime in the 1990s the arrows have remained a Route 66 icon though and it's a shame they couldn't have been better preserved but enough about Twin Arrows let's head to Canyon Diablo [Music] now we're leaving old Route 66 and we'll be heading down this dirt road for about three miles [Music] the road to Canyon Diablo is located off the same Exodus two guns and those two ghost towns are forever linked thanks to one man even though their heydays were decades apart [Music] [Applause] [Music] Canyon Diablo was named by army officer Lieutenant Amiel weeks Whipple who surveyed the area in 1853 [Music] after 18 months of steady work laying track for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company railroad tracks reach Canyon Diablo on December 19 1881. then progress came to a standstill while a bridge was being built over the canyon this is where the legend of Canyon Diablo begins [Music] we've made it out to the ruins of the ghost town of Canyon Diablo and as you could probably tell by the road that we took to get out here just as it was in the 1800s this place is pretty remote so right now I'm standing next to the grave of Hermann wolf now I mentioned all those murders and people being killed earlier well Hermann wolf is the only person that is actually known to be buried out here but we'll get more into that in just a minute [Music] Hermann wolf ran a trading post here at Canyon Diablo and died of natural causes in 1899. this grave marker was put here much later [Music] this place is incredibly Barren but there are some ruins over here so let's go check them out back when the railroads were being built there were groups that would follow the men working on the railroads to provide them with things they couldn't get from their employer things such as women alcohol and gambling and now all these railroad workers were stopped here for months while a bridge was being built the history of Canyon Diablo was written by a man named Gladwell Richardson and you could see right here just how dry it is out here it's like the stereotypical cracked Earth but anyways according to Gladwell Richardson the bridge the railroad ordered across the canyon was too short causing everything to be held up here for 18 months while a small town was built up a town that would become the most dangerous place in the Wild West [Music] I'm seeing lots of old metal like this can here there's a lid over here while the structures aren't that evident yet lots of evidence of humans being out here now I'm not sure when this is from in 1920 Canyon Diablo had a population of 36 but it quickly fell off from there nobody's lived out here in quite some time looks like there used to be a barbed wire fence up here [Music] getting back to the town's history instead of Main Street the primary street through town was called hell Street the town was said to have had 14 saloons 10 gambling houses four brothels and two dance halls according to Richardson murder on the street was common and hold ups were almost an hourly occurrence newcomers were robbed as soon as they came into town [Music] eventually the town would receive its first Marshall they say he was sworn in at three and was buried at eight that same night and it looks like there might have been something right here there's a lot of rocks but I can't really tell if this was a structure or not [Music] but five more lawmen would follow the longest lasting a month all killed in the line of duty [Music] the Town Cemetery filled up quickly with 35 burials all dying by violent means Hermann wolf whose grave we saw earlier is said to be the only person to be buried here who didn't die by violent means but did any of this actually happen probably not [Music] I'm not actually sure what this structure was these Stone ruins don't date from the 1880s and the supposedly wild Town these are from later when this was a small train station with a trading post [Music] please [Music] there are some ruins on the other side of the tracks and I want to get a look at the bridge but there has been a train parked here the entire time blocking our way but luckily I brought my drone so I guess we'll use that to check it out [Music] the writer who told the story of Canyon Diablo is the same writer who told the story of two guns and the Apache death cave which I did a video on previously there is no historical evidence to back up any of his claims if there was a town this dangerous someone would have talked about it prior to the 1960s Richardson's history of Canyon Diablo came out over 80 years after the bridge was built and the railroad workers would have moved on the town had no newspapers but Richardson somehow knew the name of every Saloon and gave details of some of the fights as if he was there to witness them probably the biggest tell that his history of the Town might not be true is the building of the bridge wasn't delayed it took six months to build and was built right on time [Music] this current railroad bridge over Cannon Diablo was built in 1947 but if you look right next to it just to the South you could see the foundations from the original Bridge still [Music] [Applause] train robberies are a big part of Old West lore and Canyon Diablo was the site of one in 1889. unlike some of the other stories about this place the Train Robbery definitely happened too an eastbound train had stopped to lubricate the driving mechanism of the locomotive when four men robbed the train and made off with eight hundred dollars but they completely missed the safe containing over 125 thousand dollars they were later caught by a posse in Utah [Music] here are the ruins that are on the other side of the tracks I believe this was the training post the structure in the building that still has its roof was a cistern to hold water [Music] this side of the tracks are part of the Navajo reservation [Music] there's an old Corral over this way but I want to get a closer look at this structure that looks like it's on the side of the canyon While most of the deadly history about this place was probably made up there was at least one actual gun battle here in 1905 two men held up a saloon in Winslow Arizona and the sheriff caught up with them here in Canon Diablo the gunfight that followed ended up with one of the robbers dead and the other in custody I'm not going to show it here but if you go to Wikipedia and look up Canyon Diablo they actually have a photo of the sheriffs holding up the robber's dead body [Music] alright so we've made it over to this structure and it is right next to the canyon [Music] based on the lack of doors or Windows this was probably another water cistern but let's climb up here and take a look and hopefully there are no snakes hiding in these rocks yep and just as I expected another cistern [Music] and we're pretty far from the train tracks here so this probably would have been somebody's personal water supply [Music] there's a pretty good view of this Horseshoe Bend in the canyon from up here too from on top of that cistern I can see all this glass over here [Music] this looks like it might have been the town dump or more likely they were just throwing it into the canyon and this is the stuff that didn't make it over [Applause] [Music] if anyone's ever looking for rusted metal cans I know a place [Music] I'm sure the bottom of this Canyon is just completely filled with trash from over a century ago let's try to take a peek over the side without falling in wow I think this Horseshoe Bend on Canyon Diablo here just looks incredible [Music] [Applause] [Music] if it weren't for the Legends this place would probably be long forgotten and while they're probably not true The Tall Tales are what keep this place alive and they also make a pretty interesting story but that's our look at the ghost town of Canyon Diablo thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up consider subscribing and we'll see you next week

Channel: Sidetrack Adventures

Views: 533,186

Keywords: Canyon Diablo, Twin Arrows, Two Guns, Canyon Diablo Arizona, Arizona Ghost Towns, Route 66 Ghost Towns, Route 66 Arizona

Id: CITGpzaDS4k

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2023