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 Nevins Blaine and her young son are standing in front of the

Cateract 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, how the small frontier city of Sioux Falls,

South Dakota drew in socialites

and celebrities who were desperate to end 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 going to give you an alley-oop.

I'm going to 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. She was 19 years old and she was this smart and savvy girl who had big dreams.

She wanted to be an actress and she imagined herself center stage, an opera singer.

But she was also this impetuous teenage girl.

So that summer, she's on vacation in Augusta, Maine, and she meets a boy. And 18 days later,

...