Here’s another trivia question for all of you - the answer is much more profound than the one on Billy The Kid.
The buffalo hunters
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I cheated and queried your title. According to that article, the simplistic view, it was religion that “tamed the Wild West”, mostly Christianity of various sects and Judaism. I have read other articles that mentioned women tamed the Wild West. They were the ones to lay down the rules for the men in their lives and needed stable, responsible men to support their families. As the young men married, became fathers, and got older, they became responsible adults, and “settled down”, creating more peaceful societies, where rules and law became meaningful in their lives.
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This reply is probably not what is being discussed. Most people today view the “wild west” through the eye of the movie camera. “We meet in the street at high noon gun fights.” Frankly I would have to say the windy city is more wild than the old western towns. People tend to not be so rude to each other if they are visibly armed and standing close together. Now I grant you that undeveloped area was more “wild” simply because smaller human intrusion and more primitive tools of comfort. However, for the most part the “wild west” wasn’t…
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Yes, the truth is, and was, the same “civilized” Eastern cities are and were more “wild” and violent than the “Wild West”, Chicago, New York, DC, etc.
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I did. I also let the dogs out.
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I don’t believe the “Wild West” was ever as wild as it’s portrayed in novels and movies. Obviously, there were dramatic moments in the American West. And there was unjust national policy against the Native Nations that we now regret.
But “Calm West” movies don’t sell, so we continue peddling the same dime novel stories, repackaged for modern audiences.
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Also, slightly off topic, but if you want to read about the real “Wild West,” look to Spain’s early conquests into the Caribbean. At the desperate pleading of Christopher Columbus, King Ferdinand of Spain tried to reign in the fortune seekers who murdered, enslaved, and stole from the West Indies inhabitants. But the voyage was too long and the area too huge for his 15th century Armada to enforce any sort of law. Anyone with a ship and ill intent could become rich without penalty. Today, pop historians like to pin all of this on Christopher Columbus, but it was the true lawless West that we sometimes imagine the U.S. Plains once were.
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WOMEN were the real tamers of the wild west (1850 - 1900) - women who were searching for homes, husbands, and families in a relatively open, lawless society. As towns became settled, signs appeared prohibiting openly carrying firearms - some townspeople frowned on even law enforcement openly carrying in public. I read where Wyatt Earp had a frock coat’s pockets reinforced with canvas liners to conceal a full-sized Colt when he did his rounds.
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I remember reading the same thing about Jamestowne, that the English colony was stuck in perpetual failure until they started sending women.
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Chinese Rail Workers…
When the rails opened up so did commerce, supplies, and cat houses.
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Yes, send us your women… 
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So…basically it was a group project.
I’m kind of guessing they had cat houses before the railroad.
There was a big tent revival movement in the 1800’s. Makes sense.
For sure, but passenger cars and the amenities on cargo cars, compared to covered wagons…
Kinda like how we had cars before Henry Ford but look what the assembly line did.
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Sure - the film Unforgiven is an example - those were often nasty-ass old days for single women.
Many people believe that Milton Hershey invented milk chocolate, but until he found a way to make it cheaper in 1894, it had been around for years - it was expensive, due to the costly process at the time to make it. Karl Benz in Germany invented the automobile in 1886, but Ford made them cheaper through his assembly-line process…
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