Alligator

A Nell Trustmon story of frogotten ghost towns of the American West.

In rural mining communities like Boyce, Colorado, the arrival of the “Alligator Man” created a community-wide celebration. How could any of the Lithuanian miners continue to work in the deep, hard rock silver mine when there was a real, live alligator in town? Gotta see that!

Alligators were hardly rare in places like Florida or the bayous of Louisiana. And almost anyone who visited a zoo in one of the major eastern cities could see a tropical display featuring gators. But, here in the high western Rockies, the alligator was a very rare sight.

The alligator came courtesy of a showman and promoter named Claude Chantt who claimed to have a Ph.D. in reptile herpetology from a university that no one had ever heard of. “Professor” Chantt (as he preferred to be called) travelled among the mining towns of the West driving a 1917 Ford Truck, pulling a large, brightly painted metal tank filled with water and containing a 15 foot alligator. He charged patrons fifteen cents each to watch his “demonstrations” of the reptile’s cunning capabilities. Each “demonstration” ended with Professor Chantt climbing a tall metal ladder next to the alligator’s tank, and then holding out a long fishing pole with a hunk of chicken attached to it. He would encourage the animal to perform, and within a minute or two, the alligator would jump up out of the water ten feet or more and grab its meal from the end of the pole.

In the evenings, after the last feeding demonstration, local children would often slip beneath the canvas fence that the Professor had set up to block the view of the non-paying spectators, and in a mixture of awe and fear, watch the alligator.