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 Nevin's 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 of small, frontier city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, drew in socialites and celebrities

who are 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 going to give you an alley-oop.

...