The Glade 4.0

Towns in the Old West were run without any government.

In 1874, under the command of General George A. Custer, a government- sponsored expedition confirmed the presence of gold in the Black Hills. The U.S. government tried to conceal the discovery from the general public in order to honor the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which forever ceded the Black Hills to the Lakota-Sioux. The government also dispatched several military units to forts in the surrounding area to keep people from entering the Hills. However, people illegally entered the area anyway, searching for gold or adventure. Despite the efforts of the military and federal government, the American populace learned about the discovery of gold in the Black Hills. Influenced by dreams and greed, the 1876 gold rush was on in the Black Hills. Once Deadwood was established, the mining camp was soon swarming with thousands of prospectors searching for an easy way to get rich. Such luck happened to fall upon Fred and Moses Manuel, who claimed the Homestake Mine, which proved to be the most profitable in the area. Although the Manuels had been lucky, others were not so fortunate. Most of the early population was in Deadwood to mine for gold, but the lawless region naturally attracted a crowd of rough and shady characters. These particular individuals made the early days of Deadwood rough and wild. A mostly male population eagerly patronized the many saloons, gambling establishments, dance halls, and brothels. These establishments were considered legitimate businesses and were well known throughout the area.

During the wild and lawless years of the settling of the West, some sort of graveyard could be found near almost every town or camp. Because many of the people in those settlements died rather quickly and unexpectedly, usually with their boots on, and were buried with their boots still on, these cemeteries became known as "boot hills." The first and most famous of them all is Tombstone's Boothill, which was laid out as a burial plot in 1878 and was originally called the Tombstone Cemetery. On that rocky hill at the edge of town lie many of the legendary characters of the "Town Too Tough To Die."

When the rest of the world heard in the late 1870s that Ed Schieffelin had found a mountain of silver worth $85 million in the middle of Apache country, newcomers flocked in droves to the new boom town in Arizona Territory. Tombstone had no law except that of the gun and knife, and Boothill's population grew quickly.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/02/28/world/americas/100000000672239/venezuela-skyscraper.html

This is really cool. It's a good example of how anarchy can work. Towns in the Old West were run without any government.

By 1877, Deadwood was evolving from a primitive mining camp to a community with a sense of order. The crude tents and shanties that had housed the early miners quickly gave way to wood and brick buildings. The community organized a town government that relied on Sheriff Seth Bullock to keep law and order.