skid road

Skid road originally meant a path of logs laid across muddy ground to slide timber to a mill or waterway.

In Pacific Northwest logging towns, the term came to mean the rough district where loggers spent their wages—full of cheap hotels, saloons, and brothels.

This sense evolved into skid row, now the more common term for an urban area of poverty and homelessness.

The old skid road part of town still has a few flophouses.