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This week's issue is all about the phrase "One Horse Town." The following is an excerpt from a section of the newsletter called "identity" where I list out everything I could find about the origins of the phrase.

Definition(s)

Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins

A one-horse town is a small town with hardly any facilities, particularly in the USA. Such towns are associated with the Wild West and the term is first recorded in a U.S. magazine of 1855. The previous year, though, there is a record of a specific place of that name: ‘The principal mining localities are…Whiskey Creek, One Horse Town, One Mule Town, Clear Creek (etc.)’.

• Cambridge English Dictionary: a town that is small and not important
• Collins English Dictionary: a small or obscure town
• Oxford English Dictionary: a small town with few and poor facilities
• ( Categorized as an idiom by Grammarist. )

Origins

Bees Knees and Barmy Armies - Origins of the Words and Phrases we Use Every Day

Most of us have come across a ‘one-horse town’ - some of us live in one - for it is quite simply a very small and sleepy town where very little happens. Almost every Western movie ever made features such a town, and the expression is indeed American in origin. This vivid image was first used there in the nineteenth century to depict a community so small that a single horse would be enough to meet its needs. (Author - Harry Oliver)

Wiktionary :

The term “one-horse” originated as an agricultural phrase, meaning ‘to be drawn/worked by a single horse.’ This led to the use of this phrase in a metaphorical sense as something that is small or insignificant. Charles Dickens explained in his publication/All the Year Round/(1871): ‘One horse’ is an agricultural phrase, applied to anything small or insignificant, or to any inconsiderable or contemptible person: as a ‘one-horse town,’ a ‘one-horse bank,’ a ‘one-horse hotel,’ a ‘one-horse lawyer’, [etc.]

The Word Detective :

“One-horse” first appeared in print in the 1730s meaning “Of a vehicle or machine: pulled or worked by a single horse. Also, of a person: having or using only one horse” (OED). A “one-horse” carriage was a small rig, and a “one-horse” business was a humble operation (“‘One-horse farmers’ … had to struggle with the inconvenience of borrowing and lending horses,” 1887). By the mid-19th century the adjective “one-horse” had come to mean “small-scale” or “insignificant” in a general colloquial sense, and was applied to things that had no connection to actual horses, as it still often is…