So it's April 1891 and we are in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which is a city of about 10,000 people right on the edge of the frontier.

And this woman named Mary Nev Evans Blaine and her young son are standing in front of the

Cataract House Hotel which is the nicest hotel for hundreds of miles.

It's a four-story brick building. It has these beautiful pointed parlors. It has steam heat and electric

bells and an elevator service.

But the reason Mary is here is completely unexpected.

She is 24 at this point.

She is here with her young son, but she is here without her husband.

She's here for a reason that is going to frankly shock the whole country,

because she has come for a divorce.

I'm April White and this is Atlas Obscura,

a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today I'm here to tell you the story of the divorce colony.

Out a small frontier city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota drew in socialites and celebrities who were desperate and their marriages.

And how, in the process, they sparked a fiery debate that forever changed the country's attitudes

about divorce.

We head to the divorce colony and meet one of the women who ended her marriage there.

After this. So I'm gonna I'm gonna give you an alley oop I'm gonna ask a question that'll get us right into this.

Who was Mary Nevins Blaine?

So in 1886, she was Mary Nevins. She was 19 years old and she was this smart and

savvy girl who had big dreams. smart and

she wanted to be an actress and she imagined herself center stage and opera

...