Street scape St Elmo

Every boom town exhibited the same progression of growth. Commuities would start out as a Tent Town with settlers living in tents and wagons to stave off the elements. Then log cabins would start to pop up and stoves would start to arrive. Many of the log cabins would burn down and the settlers would simplymove on and build another. About the same time, outhouses started popping up behind the cabins.

When the town got big enough to warrant a saw mill, the planks became available to be used to build houses and businesses. Many of the businesses would build second story false fronts to give the appearance of the business being bigger than it was. You can see this on the Mercantile building on Main Street. Sometimes the towns would also begin to put down plank sidewalks to keep customers from walking in the very dirty streets.

A fourth stage of development was homes being built from stone. Stone would usually be used first on the chimney stacks and then eventually move to the whole home.

A fith stage of home deveopment was brick homes which were the most solid and longest lasting.

Unfortunately, St .Elmo never made it past the third stage of plank homes. You see a few stone fireplaces but no stone or brick homes. This is one of the reasons why fire has been such a devistating enemy to the town. The town is very sensitive to fire so please no smoking or burning of any type in the area.

As you walk the streets of St Elmo you will see the names of the original families and the date that the houses were built on wooden placards.