Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns along the Union Pacific Railroad

Ah, the American West. From Little House on the Prairie to John Wayne, there's not an angle that hasn't been examined. As the second half of it's title indicates, Dick Kreck's Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns along the Union Pacific Railroad is the story of the hard-drinking, straight-shooting, vice-filled little places where early railroad men lost their money - and sometimes their lives. As Kreck so succinctly notes, the Union Pacific "employed thousands of Civil War veterans, tough, battle-hardened men who knew the joys of whiskey-drinking and fighting and partook of both whenever they could" (p. 111).

Still, it would be accurate to say that Hell on Wheels is more about the role of the railroads in how-the-west-was-won than it is about any individual hell-on-wheels town that popped up as the rails went down. In the space of only thirty years, the West - with its millions of bison and war-whooping Indians and unbroken vistas of prairie grass - vanished. And so, as interesting as these little towns might be, my favorite chapters were the early ones that described the early settler experience with the west (my God, I would have been a terrible pioneer) and especially the overland journey before the railroad came, when wagon trains stretched miles long across the prairie. (What can I say; I played a lot of Oregon Trail as a kid.) 

Hell on Wheels is eminently readable. Kreck makes liberal use of primary sources and, even more delightfully, period photography. Yet, with few exceptions, this book fails to capture the spirit of the men - and they were almost all men - who made the railways and the company towns and, in doing so, tamed the West. History buffs will enjoy it, but those looking for a raucous good read about the West, will enjoy Doc far more.