billy-goat hill, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

billy-goat hill n.

also billy-goat alley, goat’s gulch, goat town

[? the denizens keeping goats or, since such areas are associated with various social excesses, f. their ‘goatishness’]

(US) an area of town where a certain class of people live, usu. the poor, but occas. the better-off; note one such goat’s gulch in Kansas was gentrified and re-nicknamed Angora Heights.

1902		Coast V 199/2: There was a number iv thravellin’ shanties round town that wud put a quietus t’ th’ shanties in goat town, Frisco.
1935		‘Miscellany’ AS X:1 80/2: Closely allied to the Toonerville concept is the satirical reference made to that nondescript neighborhood on the outskirts of a town [...] such a straggling neighborhood may be referred to as Billy-Goat Hill.
1969–70		in DARE I 238/2: Billy-goat alley – a slummy place [...] (Part of a town where poorer people live) [...] Billy-goat hill.
1970		(ref. to 1890s) W. Waller Nashville in the 1890s 92: The only two wards where they polled a respectable plurality were known as ‘Billy Goat Hill’ and ‘Varmint Town’.
2002		R.D. Cohen Rainbow Quest 153: Pico Place (known locally as Goat’s Gulch) in Santa Monica.