Every railroad town had a wrong side of the tracks. Flagstaff built its own on purpose. In the boom years after the railroad arrived in 1882, the town's respectable citizens herded the gambling, drinking, and carousing trade south of the rails and corralled it inside roughly two blocks. It never stayed fully contained. The wild side leaked into the town proper, but its heart always beat south of the tracks.
Where does "the wrong side of the tracks" come from?
It is an American idiom, born about the time the railroad cut its path across the country. Tracks split small towns into good neighborhoods and bad ones, sometimes arbitrarily. Noise and danger made trackside living undesirable, so factories, warehouses, and cheap lodging competed for the ground nearest the rails. Steam and coal eventually gave way to electric power, and new shipping methods took the load off the depots, but the reputations of those neighborhoods took far longer to change.
Flagstaff's two-block wild side
In Flagstaff, the district ran along what is now South San Francisco and South Beaver Streets. Gambling, drinking, brawling, and the ladies of the evening were concentrated there, mostly by design. Stroll either street today and you will pass old stone shopfronts that once housed Flagstaff brothels; at least one still has its former license framed and on display. Owners of the renovated buildings will tell you that some of the original clientele never fully checked out.
The Southside today
The neighborhood underwent a renovation roughly twenty-five years ago and has kept transforming since, into a walkable district dotted with breweries and cafes. The buildings carry their history with them. The old Basque boarding house survives as the Tourist Home, and the surrounding blocks hold tunnels, back rooms, and stories we dig into in our walk through the Southside's past. At dusk the vibe changes, and it is easy to imagine the sordid, exciting business that once filled these narrow streets.
A note for planners: we run Southside-focused walks as private group bookings only. If your crew wants the wild side to itself, get in touch and we will set it up.
Walk this story
The public version of Flagstaff's dark side runs nightly just north of the tracks. The Flagstaff Haunted History Tour is the town's original ghost tour: 75 minutes, $29 for adults, nightly at 7 PM with an extra 8 PM walk on Fridays and Saturdays. The stories start where the railroad left them.
Boo.
