Before the 1860s, life west of the Mississippi was idyllic, a land virtually untouched by man.General Douglas MacArthur, writing about his father, a soldier guarding railroad builders during the westward migration, penned these words about the untamed frontier.

"…what a dazzling area it was — a lonely land of sun and silence. Not yet had the plow turned over the grass. Not yet had the land been spanned by ribbons of steel. Out there were still the horses, the cattle drive, the lonely rider on the mesa, the dust of the corral, the shone of saddle leather. Over the East and South still hung the smoke and bitterness left by civil war. But here, in the West, was a bright land of promise scarred only by the wind and weather — a land with unknown mountains to be climbed, alluring trails to be ridden, streams with strange names to be navigated by the strong and vigorous, a land of water holes, of dusty sagebrush, of sturdy pines."

And then came the railroads. Always on the heels of construction crews was a rolling townoffering any vice desired, including prostitution, gambling, and liquor. This traveling settlement came to be known as Hell on Wheels.