Secret Edinburgh - The Wild West Ghost Town

Edinburgh has many hidden nooks and cranies, but none are more unique or eclectic as the morningside wild west village. Morningside is a neighbourhood in Edinburgh and is rather well known for being an affluent area, though that's not really relevant here. What is relevant is that if you wander around long enough you will encounter an alleyway behind the main road filled with storage units.

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Only, these storage units are not your average storage units. They have been converted into an old wild west village. I call it a ghost town as its been sat there for years now and is slowly falling apart.

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You might be thinking "huh?" and you would be right! I thought the same when I first heard about it.. it's like the chewbacca defence.. it just doesn't make sense! What is a wild west village doing down an alley in on of the fanciest neighbourhoods of the capital city of Scotland?! It makes no sense!

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Well, it all started back in the 1990s. A local man that owned a furniture store that specialised in southwestern style furniture called 'The Great American Indoors' <-nice word play. He had this all built just to advertise the products he was selling.

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Some of the units with these facades were occupied by local artists and ceramists at the time.

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As it happens, one of the man's employees had worked on the construction of EuroDisney and helped to create the authentic (i don't know -american readers how authentic is it really?) signage.

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I spent a little time growing up in America and have been to a few old west ghost towns etc back in the 80s and it seems relatively authentic to me.. but I am relying on memories from 20+ years ago!

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I think my favourite part of this whole place, and remains as the only functional part of this whole place, is the Cantina. The door (as you can see by the writing on it) serves as the fire escape for the morningside public library. I think it would be quite fun to see the looks on people's faces during a fire drill when they get evacuated to find themselves looking at this wild west town.

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For the longest time I thought this sign belonged to the furniture store, but having learned the actual name (The great american indoors) it would seem it is not. It probably is connected to it though being a furniture store.

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The interesting thing about this place really I think is that even most of the Edinburgh locals are actually clueless to it's existence.

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I rather delight in taking people who have lived all their lives in this city to this place for them to see it for the first time and be speechless at it's existence. They'll say how they passed it countless times utterly oblivious to its existence .. but hey .. that's part of what makes it so cool!

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Its less of a secret these days, after I (and a few others) discovered it and blogged about it over the years, but it's still there, it still comes as a surprised to folks, some know of it .. but don't know where it is and some are still completely unaware of its existence.

I took a group of colleagues to see it once after a 'team building' day we held nearby and we got a few amusing looks from the local mechanic that operates a garage down that alley. I bet he gets that sort of thing a lot though.

Are there any bizarre or just plain cool little secret places like this where you live? Every city has an awesome secret. What's yours?

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