Within a few short months El Dorado's population doubled, and, before the year
was out, it doubled again before peaking two years later at over 40,000. With the
population explosion came oilmen from Louisiana and Texas, but along with them
on the trains that arrived daily, were thousands of bums, promoters, and crooks.
Within weeks of the discovery barrelhouses with prostitutes, gambling, and whisky
sprouted up across from the railroad station on South Washington Street, which
became known as Hamburger Row because of the hamburger stands on the streets.
During the first two years of the oil boom Hamburger Row reverted to the
lawlessness of the old West as El Dorado's small police force was unable to handle
the chaos. On street corners young boys sold moonshine in six-ounce Coca Cola
bottles for $1.25; prostitutes walked the streets, and dope peddlers like Smiling
Jack and Weasel tugged at people's sleeves. Hamburger Row was filled with
characters like Barrelhouse Sue, who had come up from Homer, Louisiana following the boom and sang, danced, and solicited in places like Dago Red's, Pistol Hill and Shotgun Valley. Two Shot Blondie, another madam, imported prostitutes and made moonshine deliveries and was well known on Hamburger Row and Jake's Place, the biggest and most notorious of the barrelhouses, the one that
boasted the prettiest girls in town. Big Ed, a giant of a man, was a gang enforcer for the infamous Silvertop, one of the most feared men in South Arkansas, and Oscar and Joe were two moonshiners who made door-to-door deliveries. Teams of oxen and mules, some as long as 20 pairs, pulled oil field equipment through the streets, and after heavy rain, the iron-wheeled wagons turned most of the streets in town into quagmires so dangerous some mules actually drowned.
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