 It was named for the second wife of Dr. Lewis S. Owings, Helen M. Owings Swisher.The town was the birthplace of the so-called "Helena Duel", in which the left hands of two opponents are tied together with buckskin and each fighter is given a knife with a three-inch blade — too short to reach a vital organ or cause a single fatal stab.After the combatants are whirled around a few times, they slash away at each other until one bleeds to death from the accumulation of cuts and stabs.