In the early 1880s, after the Northern Pacific Railroad announced plans for a branch line to Yellowstone National Park, Gardiner quickly emerged as a wild west town that early accounts called “a veritable Shantyville . . . an ideal squatter town, with the rudest houses.” Although the branch line did not arrive until 1902, coal mines to the north, gold mines to the south, poachers in the park, and troops at nearby Fort Yellowstone brought a steady stream of men to drink, gamble, and visit prostitutes. General lawlessness prevailed until Park County was created in 1887 and county officials hired a constable and built the first Gardiner jail. After that jail burned down in 1898, Gardiner again lacked a place to confine unruly drunks and criminals. When the first tourist trains arrived in summer 1902, visitors encountered lewd public displays, nearly continuous yelling and shooting through the night, and women of ill fame openly exhibiting themselves in town. By mid-September 1903, Gardiner’s sturdy sandstone jail was ready for its first inmates. Unchanged today, its original three-cell block remains, and its graffiti-covered walls, floor, and ceiling provide the only record of many of its short-term occupants.