How wild was the Wild West? (2024)

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How wild was the Wild West? ›

In reality, the West was a lot tamer than it's often portrayed in popular culture, but certain areas did have dangerous undercurrents of violence, experts told Live Science.

Life was hard. Living in the West was physically demanding. The West was often a lawless place, where disputes were settled by violence. It was also a diverse place, where, on any given day, numerous people groups interacted.

Fights were frequent, deaths were commonplace, and frontier justice reigned. The notorious mining town of Bodie, California, had twenty-nine murders between 1877 and 1883, which translated to a murder rate higher than any other city at that time, and only one person was ever convicted of a crime.

They called it the Wild West for a reason. The frontier was a crazy place while America was moving west and settling the previously-untamed region. Gun battles were commonplace. Outlaws ruled in small towns and pop-up villages.

Enter the army on the side of the settlers, and the Native Americans were pushed onto ever smaller reservations. This “taming” of the West happened to the Sioux in the Dakotas, the Apache in Arizona, the Modoc in northern California, the Nez Perce in the northwest, and to many other tribes throughout the West.

In reality, the West was a lot tamer than it's often portrayed in popular culture, but certain areas did have dangerous undercurrents of violence, experts told Live Science.

Heart disease, drowning and falls were the most common causes of death.

Then, Bodie, with its population of over 10,000, was one of the most infamous places in the whole U.S.A., reputed as the worst, most violent and most lawless town in the Wild West.

The end of the frontier: The closing of the American frontier in 1890 marked the end of an era. With the frontier gone, the gunslinger's role became obsolete. No longer was there a need for a lone hero to protect the town from marauding outlaws.

James “Jim” Brown Miller (b. 1861) was one of the worst of the many violent men of the Wild West. Miller was a Texas Ranger turned outlaw and professional killer who was said to have killed 12 people during gunfights.

What ended the Wild West era? ›

Cowboys played an essential role in the ranching industry by driving cattle across the open range in the mid-19th century, but the invention of barbed wire fencing, the increased privatization of land, and the growth of the railroad brought an end to the cowboys' way of life.

Names for a cowboy in American English include buckaroo, cowpoke, cowhand, and cowpuncher. Another English word for a cowboy, buckaroo, is an anglicization of vaquero (Spanish pronunciation: [baˈkeɾo]).

The Golden Age of the West is usually held to have lasted from the American Civil War to the admission of most western states into the union around 1890. As the Civil War began in 1861, the northern states came to control the Congress, which could pass resolutions to colonize the western territories.

Perhaps the highlight of a cowboys time was cooking up a hearty meal for themselves and their friends, a meal that would more often than not feature a large hunk of meat. It wouldn't be unusual for a cowboy to tuck a few pieces of flank steak under their saddle between the leather and the horse.

Granville Stuart, the well known Montana rancher and politician, recorded that cowboys on the trail ate corn meal, sorghum molasses, beans, salt, and bacon. Game, including deer or, while they lasted, buffalo, might add meat to the regimen.

The majority of deaths occurred because of diseases caused by poor sanitation. Cholera and typhoid fever were the biggest killers on the trail. Another major cause of death was falling off of a wagon and getting run over.

Cowboys herded cattle, cared for horses, made repairs to fences and buildings, worked cattle drives and sometimes lived in frontier towns. They were not always welcome as they travelled, as they had reputations of being drunk, disorderly and even violent.

Was the “Old West” violent? Scholars have established that it was not as violent as most movies and novels would suggest. Murder was not a daily, weekly, or even monthly occurrence in most small towns or farming, ranching, or mining communities.

Life for the average person in the 1800's was hard. Many lived a hand-to-mouth existence, working long hours in often harsh conditions. There was no electricity, running water or central heating.