HISTORIC Trolley Tour Dodge City Convention & Visitors Bureau Historic Trolley Tour
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Self Guided HISTORIC Trolley Tour Dodge City Convention & Visitors Bureau Historic Trolley Tour Photo Rights Reserved by Kansas Heritage Center, Boot Hill Museum, and Josh Roesener Photography. Start Audio Well howdy folks, and welcome to Dodge City, Kansas–cowboy capital of the world! During this tour, you’ll learn about the evolution of Dodge from a dusty trail town to a bustling cattle and agricultural capital. You’ll hear about the people and places that helped create and tame what some have called “the wickedest little city in the west.” However, before there was a town, there was a trail–the Santa Fe Trail. 50 years before Dodge City was founded in 1872, traders and wagons rumbled along where the town is now. Thousands of wagons traveled from Missouri to Santa Fe, an outpost in what was then Mexico, where traders exchanged merchandise for silver and gold. Slow to point 1 Fort Dodge was established in 1865 to protect wagon trains on the trail from Wagon train on Santa Fe Trail attacks by Plains Indian tribes and to furnish supplies to the soldiers who were fighting the Indian wars on the plains. The abundance of buffalo here lured the hunters, who swarmed over the area killing buffalo to sell for a reasonable price. A successful day’s hunt might reward the hunter with a $100. That would be over $3,000 by today’s standards. As the word spread about the excellent hunting and about the railroad that would soon reach western Kansas, entrepreneurs everywhere were eager to start a business near the new railroad tracks and Fort Dodge, to supply hunters with necessities for their trade. Dodge City in the beginning George Hoover arrived first and promptly opened a saloon on the west edge of the military reservation. In June of 1872, George served his spirits on a board laid between two stacks of sod supports. Within a few weeks, there were several more saloons, dance halls, a general store, blacksmith shop and other businesses, all located south of the newly laid railroad tracks. The first train arrived in September of 1872. Already, buffalo hides were stacked high waiting to be shipped back east. Soon after the arrival of the railroad, many 1 businesses moved north of the tracks to Front Street. We are now at the base of Boot Hill, which stood boldly over the new little town and was convenient spot for burials. George Hoover recalled the first burial on Boot Hill in September of 1872. Buffalo hides stacked by railroad According to Hoover, “He was planted, as they called it.” From 1872 to 1878 Dodge City had no proper cemetery so if you had the money or were considered to be someone of importance, you were buried at Fort Dodge. However, if you were like this poor soul, who Mr. Hoover said got planted, he was probably a cowboy or buffalo hunter who had a bit of money in his pocket and wanted to do some gambling and drinking. He likely got into a fight over a card game or a saloon girl and got shot. The saloon keepers might have thought “we can’t leave him laying here, because it’s no good to have a dead man in your saloon”, so they carried him to the top of the hill and buried him in a shallow grave. I say shallow because cowboys don’t like to dig holes so they didn’t dig very deep. Since he didn’t die in the comfort of his bed of natural causes, but suddenly in the street or saloon with his boots on, he could have been buried with such. It became known as Boot Hill, and it forever after carried that name. During the winter of 1872 and spring of 1873, no less than 15 men were killed in Dodge City and planted, as they called it, on “Boot Hill.” Only one woman is believed to have been buried there-Alice Chambers, a dance hall girl who died in May of 1878, and was the last person buried on Boot Hill. With the town booming because of the Texas cattle trade, the land covered with these unmarked graves became too valuable as merely a burial ground for this “motley crew of sinners.” Early in 1879, the bodies were removed and reburied in Dodge City’s first official cemetery to make way for a new school building. School House replaced Boot Hill Cemetary Slow to point 2 Some buffalo hunters boasted that the buffalo would not be eliminated from the plains in a hundred years. However, several years of intensive hunting caused a noticeable decline in buffalo hide and meat shipments. As the buffalo hunters’ campfires died away and Indian tribes submitted to confinement on reservations, Texas drovers headed their longhorns up the Chisholm Trails, and later the Western Trail, to Dodge City. Cattle drives into eastern Kansas Cowtowns ended because of rural settlement and a Kansas quarantine law. Longhorn cattle carried a tick that infected 2 domestic cattle with splenic fever. The Kansas legislature passed a quarantine law barring all longhorns from central and south Texas-where the epidemic was rampant-from entering parts of Kansas settled by local ranchers. This action made Dodge City the principle shipping point for Texas cattlemen, beginning about the mid 1870s. The drive from Texas to Kansas became known as “going up the trail” because the cattle cut permanent and deep trails across the prairie. One old cowboy who rode up the Western Trail in 1884 described it as a “chocolate brown and brick red ribbon that wound up over the hills and down to the rivers and creek bottoms and was fifty to hundred feet in width, cut into the prairie Cattle drive sod a foot or more in depth by the hooves of the longhorn cattle.” A Texas trail drive was a serious operation. As many as 3,000 cattle were collected in south Texas and handed over to a trail boss for delivery at the railhead 1,500 miles or more away. 10 to 12 trail hands tended the herd, along with a cook and also a wrangler to care for the remuda – a herd of a 100 or more saddle horses. The cowboys spent 14 to 16 hours a day in the saddle – for 30 dollars a month plus their board. They “punched” the cattle along the trail some 10 to 12 miles a day. Clouds of dust were visible for miles on the Kansas prairie and the sound of the cattle hooves was heard hours before the longhorn appeared. When a longhorn steer established itself as the leader of the herd, drovers often shipped the steer home back for use on later cattle drives. The monument on this site is “El Capitan,” a tribute to those longhorn cattle leaders. Slow to point 3 Each year more and more cattle were driven to Dodge City, earning the title “Queen of the Cowtowns.” Dodge’s cattle era was the longest of any of the Cowtowns. But the cattle boom abruptly ended in 1885 when the quarantine line moved west of Dodge City, and cattle drives no longer could reach here. Adding to the economic disaster were blizzards the next winter that devastated local herds and left the region’s cattle industry crippled. Not until the 1900s did the cattle trade regain momentum. Moreover, it did not reach Cattle loading on train its former heights until the 1960s. 3 A complete disregard for law and order marked the first few years of Dodge City’s existence. Charlie Bassett was appointed the first sheriff in Dodge City in 1873 and Larry Deger was appointed the first marshal in December of 1875. After that the town fathers hired skilled lawmen such as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp. Other lawmen of note included Mysterious Dave Mather, George Hinkle, Ed Masterson, James Masterson, and Pat Sughrue. The town these early men knew had two Front Dodge City Peace Commission Streets, one on each side of the railroad tracks, on the right of where we are now. The railroad tracks became known as the “deadline,” a boundary between the proper north side and the infamous south side. No firearms, dance halls, or other rowdy establishments were allowed north of the tracks. Unless a complaint was filed lawmen made little effort to enforce ordinances on the Map of Dodge City (1870s) south side of the tracks. Another person of note who spent time in Dodge City was John Henry “Doc” Holliday. Doc came to Dodge City from Fort Griffin, Texas in the spring of 1878 after being informed by Wyatt Earp about the opportunities to make money from the cowboys who had gotten paid after the cattle drives. So Doc secured a room at the Dodge House Hotel and practiced dentistry during the day and played cards at night, relieving Doc Holliday Dodge House (1878) the cowboys of their hard earned money. Check out the statue of Doc located just west of the Visitor Center. Sit at the table and play a hand of poker with him. On this site, known as Front Street, was the main business block of the 1870s and 1880s. Several fires in1885 destroyed the wooden false front buildings that housed saloons and trading establishments popular with buffalo hunters Dodge City North Front Street (1875) 4 and cowboys. When the cowboys reached Dodge City, they collected their pay and set out to spend it on liquor, women, card games, clothes, guns, and a bath. By 1877, Dodge City had 1,000 people and 16 saloons.