Nevada
Palisade

Palisade came into being in 1868, as a railroad town which served as watering spot on the Humboldt River for the thirsty tanks of the dehydrated engines of the Central Pacific Railroad. The settlement was named for the sheer rock walls to the east. The town grew in importance in 1874 when the Eureka and Palisade Railroad was begun, to handle the ore shipments, transient supplies, and passenger service from the Central Pacific line to the interior of Nevada. Then Palisade boomed! From a few families and railroad employees, the population expanded to 290 people. Three new saloons, a dry goods store, two grocery stores, and a sporting house were added to the main street. A new depot and cafe was built for the convenience of all the passengers.

The town of Palisade, upon the suggestion of one of the Central Pacific's conductors, decided that the travellers should see, and experience, some of the impossibly wild things they had heard and read about. That’s how the first of the massacres at Palisade was staged.
Frank West, a cowboy from one of the ranches up north, would play the "good guy, while the part of the villain was acted out by Alvin Kittleby, the town dandy. As the noon train stopped, Frank lounged near the corrals. As most of the passengers had disembarked, Dandy rounded the corner of the depot and began walking toward the saloon across the dusty main street. Frank stepped away from the corral and yelled that he would kill dandy because of what he had done to his sister. Dandy froze in his tracks and stared in panic at West. West coked his gun, aimed, and fired Dandy. The bullet, of course, sped harmlessly over Dandy's head, but Dandy screamed as though in mortal agony and fell to the ground. Women screamed and fainted, and men scattered in all directions as they frantically sought cover. Several of the townspeople rushed forward and carried Dandy’s body into the nearest saloon. Others took the gun away from West and began dragging him down the street, presumably to the jail. When a few minutes later the train pulled out, there wasn't a head to be seen in the windows of the coaches. The caboose had scarcely left the station when the town began laughing, and they didn't stop laughing for three years.

Over 1,000 acts were put on by the Palisade inhabitants. The whole railroad system was clued in on the joke. Every citizen in the surroundings contributed ideas for the townspeople to use, or whatever props that were needed. At one time or another, every person in town participated, some of them several times in one day. Many variations of the original act were presented, but the one which seemed to elicit the most shock was the one where a gang of bank robbers shot it out with the sheriff's deputies. As soon as most of the gang and quite a few deputies were down, a few dozen Indians raced down the main street, "killing" women and children along with the men. This whole action used up approximately ten minutes and one gallon of beef blood from the slaughterhouse.

There was not even one crime committed in Palisade at the time of these acts. The town was so law-abiding that it didn't even have a sheriff.

As Eureka’s mines slowed down, the Eureka and Palisade Railroad runs became more and more infrequent. A series of disastrous floods struck the town in 1910, wiping out many businesses and damaging the railroads. The Eureka-Nevada Railroad pulled up its rails in 1938. Palisade went into a long decline. The post office closed in 1961, and Palisade became a ghost town.

Based on “Old-West History Massacres at Palisade Nevada”, by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace (1975 – 1981)