It was laid out in regular squares, divided into five
wards, had a Mayor and Board of Aldermen, a Daily Paper and volume of
ordinances for the City Government. It was the end of the freight and
passenger service and the beginning of the division under
construction. Twice a day, long trains arrived from and departed for
the East, while stages and wagon trains connected it with points in
Idaho, Montana, and Utah. All the passengers and goods for the West,
came here by rail and were re-shipped to their several destinations.

Twenty-three saloons paid license to the city, while dance halls and
gambling dens were even more numerous. The great institution was the
"Big Tent." This was a frame structure, one hundred feet long and
forty feet wide, floored for dancing, to which and gambling it was
entirely devoted. A visitor to the city thus described it: "One to two
thousand men and a dozen or more women were encamped on the alkali
plain in tents and shanties." Only a small proportion of them had
aught to do with the road or any legitimate occupation. Restaurant and
saloon keepers, gamblers, desperadoes of every grade, the vilest of
men and women made up this "Hell on Wheels" as it was most aptly
termed. Six months later, all that was left to mark the site was a few
rock piles and half destroyed chimneys together with piles of old
cans. The city after a tumultuous existence of only sixty days had
"got up and pulled its freight" to the next headquarters.

Green River, Bryan, Bear River City, and Wasatch were the headquarters
successively. The first, owing to the railroad having made it the end
of a division and located shops there, has survived; the other three
are but memories.

At Bear River City, the tough element who had been driven out of the
different points East, congregated in large numbers, proposing to make
a stand, it being supposed it would become a permanent town. The law
abiding element numbered about a thousand, the toughs as many more.
Three thugs were hung for murder, and in a reprisal the town was
attacked on November 19th, 1868, by the tough element. They seized and
burned the jail, then sacked and destroyed the plant of the "Frontier
Index," a printing outfit that followed up the railroad, issuing a
Daily Paper, and which had been particularly outspoken in its
denunciation of the lawless element. They then proceeded to attack
some of the stores, but were met by the townspeople and in the
pitched battle tha