Toughing it out on a Tibetan frontier

Xiahe is a frontier town. It's 3000m up in the Quilian mountains, in a region mainly populated by Tibetans, and exists largely because of the presence of the huge Labrang Monastery.

The wide main street is sealed, but every downpour brings muddy water surging down from the surrounding hills, and when it dries, the wind whips up an almost permanent dust storm.

There's a team of street sweepers employed to try to keep the dust under control, wielding two straw brooms apiece, but as far as I could see all they did was to move the dust around in great clouds.

The town's pride and joy are the footpaths running down each side of the street, raised high above the street, like the boardwalks of the old Wild West towns, to keep mud and dust, floods or snows at bay, and nicely tiled, providing easy access to the two lines of shops.

Unfortunately, while I was there the tiles were in the process of being removed making walking on the paths slightly hazardous. However, walking on the roadway was even more hazardous because drivers here - especially the ever-present taxi drivers - take little account of the rules on which side of the road to use so they can come at you from any direction.

But that certainly doesn't stop Xiahe from bustling with activity. Its shops sell everything you could possibly want out here on China's wild northwest, from the thick felt boots worn by monks to knock-off brand-name windfleeces and from piles of freshly picked medicinal herbs to gleaming brass prayer-wheels.

And the footpaths are full of a fascinating mix of monks in reddish-purple robes - mostly toting mobile phones and with money for shopping and taxis - a few Hui, a Muslim minority, in their distinctive white hats, and the cowboys on this Asian frontier, Tibetan nomads, come to town to pray at the monastery or trade their yak butter and animal hides for dresses and mobile phones.

The Tibetan men walk with the sort of swagger you used to see in Hollywood westerns, their faces lean, dark and dangerous, hair long, black and greasy under their stetson-style hats, and they wear coats with sleeves twice the normal length, worn off the shoulder so their hands are free on warm days, but great for keeping hands warm when it freezes.

The women also sport stetsons and for their outings into town mostly wear brightly coloured blouses, dark skirts and masses of heavy jewellery.

I didn't see any of them riding horses but several of the men zoomed around on motorbikes with the same bravado as the oldtime gunslingers.

Remembering Frontier Town - Chuck Miller - timesunion.com - Albany NY

Once upon a time, the Adirondacks were filled from one end of Route 9 to the other with amusement parks. Most of them have faded away, others have evolved under the aegis of new ownerships.  You might remember some of those classic nams – the Land of Makebelieve, 1000 Animals, Gaslight Village…

In the past, I’ve written about my memories of what was once called Storytown , now known as the Great Escape.  In today’s blog post, I want to bring you some memories of Frontier Town.

One of the best resources for history of Frontier Town is Steve Gross’ website .  In this site, he talks about how the park first opened in 1952, and that for the next 40 years the park was owned and operated by Art Bensen and his associates.  The park was sold in 1983, and it continued to operate under new management until at least 1998.

These are some YouTube clips of memories of Frontier Town; some of them also appear on the Frontiertown.net website.

These are the memories that we hold dear.  Memories of cowboys and Indians, rodeos and roundups.

Sadly, this next batch of videos shows what happened to the park in later years. This set of clips, posted to YouTube from 2008 to as recently as last week, show a group of urban explorers as they enter the property and chronicle the decay and collapse of a once-proud theme park.

Sadly, I have no memories of ever visiting Frontier Town – my family always went to Storytown or Gaslight Village.  I think one time we did Santa’s Workshop, and maybe 1000 Animals up in Lake Placid.  But we never visited Frontier Town, at least not that I can recall.

But I’m sure many of you blog readers either went there at one time in your life.  And if you have memories of Frontier Town back in the day, please post them here, or on Steve Gross’ website.

And hopefully those memories are of great times and great adventures – and not of the remnants of a once-vibrant amusement park, now just a shell of rotting buildings off a forgotten Northway exit.

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