There was a coal boom on the high plains about 1980. Rock Springs, Wyoming, had been nothing much to notice a few years earlier and suddenly was a boom town. Some very odd stuff happened about then. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Cantrell
It seems to me that it in part was the effect of the boom: the hot local economy drawing a lot of unattached young men with money, the local government expanding too rapidly for controls.
