How Wild Was the Old West?

by Bill Russo  

Author at Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Kobo/Walmart

How Wild Was the Old West?

Television, Hollywood, and pulp magazines joined forces to deride the Old West and give it the nickname,The Wild West! 

Judging by the media, almost every poker game ended with a cheater being blasted out his chair by three quick slugs from a Colt 45. 

You were more likely to see a 'Hoss-thief' hanging from a Cottonwood Tree than washing from a clothesline.

The average working life of a sheriff in a western pulp novel or magazine, was about 12 pages if he was lucky.  If chance was not on his side, he'd get blasted on the first page.

Let's match fantasy and reality.  How many deadly gunfights do you think there were in a single year in the towns of Arizona, Kansas, Texas, and such, back in the late 1800s?

One a week in every town?  At least a thousand a year?  

How 'bout 5,000?

No. 

Not 5000 or even 500 or even 50!

There were five!

Five was the highest number of murders in any Wild West town in any year....and that includes Dodge City, Durango, Amarillo, Cheyenne, and all the others.

On average, there were 1.5 murders in the towns of the West per year.  The figure includes shootings as well as stabbings, beatings, poisonings, and others. 

A number of people will say, "What about Tombstone, Arizona and the OK Corral?" 

Sorry about that.  Only three people were killed in that famous gunfight - and that was Tombstone's bloodiest year.

One of the wildest towns in the West was a place called Whiz-Bang City.  What is unique about this Oklahoma town is that it was a wild west town almost 40 years after the battle at the Ok Corral. In the 1920s, when the cowboys were riding Model T cars to their gun battles, Whiz Bang City sprang up overnight and quickly became famous as a dangerous, wild, and quirky place.

About a year ago I wrote 'Whiz-Bang City, the Last Wild West Town'.  It's a fact based tale of the city, and its first sheriff, one of the slickest lawmen/crooks in history.

The town was born during the Oklahoma oil boom and died when the wells went dry.  During its short history it saw more action than most of the most of the old west towns.

After more than 1,000 downloads, I've dropped the price for this book to ZERO.  You can read it for free, on Smashwords or Barnes and Noble.  No fees, no membership required.

Follow the link.  If it doesn't work, just Google, Whiz Bang City by Bill Russo and you'll be directed to it.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/695784