Shanty towns also tend to lack basic services present in more formally organized settlements, including policing, mail delivery, medical services and fire fighting.
Similarly, many unlucky merchants set up in settlements which disappeared, or which succumbed to one of the calamitous fires that swept the towns that sprang up.
The pioneer shoemaker, gunsmith and blacksmith were welcome adjuncts to the early settlements, as were, also, the back-woods school masters and preachers.
