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On Friday, Dr. Charles Vollan who is a professor at SDSU gave a lecture titled "Hell on Wheels: Urban History along the Union Pacific Railroad, 1865-69." Dr. Vollan took at closer look at these "boom and bust" towns that developed along the railroad as it was being built. The Union Pacific started from the east and the Central Pacific started from the west. These two were to meet and connect the nation. As these railroads were built, towns began popping up all over. They sometimes grew too fast for their own good. There was a bad reputation of these towns as being wild, lawless places where people are killed everyday. Dr. Vollan makes the argument that these towns were not as violent, lawless, and wild as believed. There were respectable people, and they made up the heart of these towns.

I'd have to say that I really enjoyed this lecture, and I am glad I attended. There is a reputation of these wild frontier towns even today. People still say the "wild west" and TV/movies play into this belief (like the show "Deadwood"). They say these cities were full of prostitutes, gunslingers, thieves, and any other low lives imaginable. Dr. Vollan made a very compelling case that these towns were not that bad. There were many cases of "you should have seen what happened last week." There were very few instances of witness accounts to violent acts. These towns received these bad reputations because there was a focus on the exciting, lawless deeds. Even today, the media focuses more on the bad or "exciting" side of things. Dr. Vollan even said in the about 2- year development and association of the railroad of the town Cheyenne, there were only 22 acts of violence, and that included everything and anything.