It depends on what you mean by 'wild west.' Were there times and places where settlement and expansion outpaced the establishment of formal law enforcement and governance? Yes, especially in mining boomtowns. However, recent scholarship has largely focused on how the west and western expansion was actually oriented around a larger role for federal government and was mediated by federal policies that made expansion and settlement possible. But I really don't have any idea what you mean with such a broad and general question so I'm stabbing in the dark here