Why was the Wild West wild?
The Wild West was wild because law and order had not been brought into it. There were plckets of law enforcement where towns had built up, but there were other areas where the only law was how influential or forceful you could be. The wild west was also wild because there were vast regions of land that had not been explored (by europeans anyway) and there were lots of conflicts between the indigeounous people (who were there first) and the settlers. (who wanted to kill the people who were there first and take their land) The West was eventually tamed by widespread use of the telegraph and the steam engine, but small pockets of resistance still exist today, and of course some of those indigeounous people still live on reservations that live by slightly different laws than we follow.
Two points here. It seemed wild to those in the east because the west was a frontier. All of the institutions including the institutions of social control were not in place. But the wildness of the west is easy to exaggerate. Even rough, tough western towns like Dodge or Abilene were safe places. If you were a shopkeeper in Dodge your chances of being gunned down by some desperado on the main street were about the same as that happening in Des Moines today. If you were a schoolmarm in Abilene your chances of being stalked home and assaulted were on par with your chances of a meteorite landing on your head.
