“Gunsmoke” Country…
The road heads northeast out of Amarillo and back out on the plains as we head to our next destination, Dodge City, Kansas. The road out of town is US 287 for about 90 miles due north and then we hang a right on US 54, travelling 150 miles from Texas through the Oklahoma panhandle and on into Kansas, finally turning left onto US 283 for the last 20 miles. In this roughly 260 mile stage of the trip, the land transitions from the fringe of the Chihuahuan Desert around Amarillo to the Great Plains. The oncoming landscape falls into a pattern. I discover that when the flat prairie begins to be broken into rolling hills it means that I am approaching a river valley. In succession miles apart, the Lunch Box crosses the Canadian and Cimarron River valleys, both broad, shallow depressions in the prairie with a narrow trickle of water winding through a wide river bottom thick with brush and cottonwoods. Other than along the river bottoms, the prairie is an endless stretch of flat fields. Starting from Dumas in Texas and stretching all the way to Dodge City, the land opens in all directions on fields of grains and soybeans. Farms are large with clusters of trees denoting the farmhouse few and far between. Finally we reach the edge of a bluff and before us is the Arkansas River Valley and Dodge City in the distance. The picture “compresses” the distance; I am really still about three miles from the city. Dodge City sits astride the Arkansas River at the foot of a small range of bluffs. The business district is a narrow strip between the bluff and the railroad, with the larger, residential areas stretching across the flat prairie to the north on top of the bluffs behind the water tower.
Dodge City is one of the most storied locations in the history of the West. When William Becknell plotted the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 he chose to follow the Arkansas River across the prairie into present day Colorado before turning southwest over the mountains to Santa Fe. For nearly 60 years this was the primary route into the southwest from the east, one of the “super highways” of the day. Just west of present day Dodge City is a Santa Fe Trail landmark site where, if you look carefully, you can still see tracks of the Santa Fe Trail crossing the bluffs on the north side of the river. The river was prone to flash floods and wandered over a wide river bottom so the trail crossed the bluffs above the river. It is harder to see the traces of the trails in the picture than it is in person, but look for changes in the color of the vegetation in the center of the picture (green vs. gold) and then on the side of the hills to the right of the tree. The “road” was not one lane but rather like a braid as many as four wagons travelled abreast at a time.
Settlement in the area didn’t really occur until after the Civil War when Fort Dodge was established in 1865 about five miles east of the present day townsite in order to provide protection for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. Fort Dodge was only active as a military post until 1882 and then slumbered on as a “Soldiers Home” and Veterans Affairs clinic to this day. The site now looks like a small town with little houses from early in the century clustered on tidy grounds around a new, multi-story VA building and the old officer’s quarters. Many of the original houses from the 1880’s survive and are in use today. The Quartermaster’s Building from 1867 houses a small museum across the street from the 1902 church.
As with much of the west, the town arrived with the coming of the railroad. The “glory years” that built the legends of the West were actually a relatively brief period of time. The decimation of the vast buffalo herds of the Great Plains took a short period of time. There were stacks of buffalo hides waiting on the ground when the railroad reached Dodge City in 1872, and in the next three years over 850,000 hides were shipped east. In addition, famers came in after the hunters and salvaged the bones as they could be ground up and used for the manufacture of china and fertilizer. By 1875 the buffalo were gone but the cattle boom was on. In the next 10 years great cattle drives brought over five million cattle through the stockyards of Dodge City as it became the primary shipping point for cattle from Texas to the east coast. This was the “hey day” of Dodge City, the times of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, and the inspiration for my favorite childhood western TV show, Gunsmoke. The town burned several times and so there are not any of those early buildings still standing.
When the railroad came to the area the tracks hugged the bottom of a line of bluffs on the north side of the Arkansas River. The river bed is wide and prone to flash floods, so the town was situated away from the river on higher ground, climbing up the bluffs to the flat prairie above. There were two “Front Streets”, one on each side of the tracks. The south side, about a half mile between the tracks and the river, was the wild side of town. The sale of liquor was restricted to this side of the tracks. By 1876 there were 1,200 people in Dodge City and 19 liquor licenses on the south side. One of the major surprises is that this is NOT a tourist town. The only evidence of the tourist trade is on the west end of the old downtown area, where the Boot Hill Museum and a reconstructed Front Street are located. Operating during the summer season, reenactments of gun fights, etc., happen here.
However, once the railroads reached western Texas in the late 1880’s the cattle drives ended and Dodge City settle into a placid little town dependent on ranching and farming. The early 1900’s were a prosperous time for Dodge City and the most of the buildings in the compact downtown area just east of Boot Hill were constructed at this time. Today the buildings are occupied by professional offices, government, and a surprising number of Hispanic businesses. Present day Dodge City is somewhat segregated. Evidenced by the signs on businesses, downtown retail and the area south of the railroad tracks is the “Hispanic” part of town. Up on the flats north of downtown is the mall, Wal-Mart, etc.
The original Boot Hill cemetery is gone, long ago excavated and the site used for commercial buildings, but just east of Boot Hill Gospel Hill still stands. above the town. Gospel Hill is the neighborhood of several churches built on a bluff above the downtown area as well as houses for the well-to-do of the early 1900’s.
Streets in the older part of town are paved in brick. I noticed that the pattern of the brick changed at intersections and was curious as to why. Turns out that once motorized vehicles started driving on the brick pavers the bricks had to be “angled” at intersections in order to prevent the pressure of turning tires from forcing the bricks apart. Who knew?
The view south from Gospel Hill is down the bluff to the river bottom and across to the plains stretching south into Oklahoma,
On a side street just up the street from the Boot Hill Museum is another one of those little “oddities” that just make my day. Sharing a small building under the blue Kansas sky is the combination “Kansas’ Teachers’ Hall of Fame” and the “Famous Gunfighters’ Wax Museum”. Not only is the juxtaposition amusing, but the museum is only open during the summer months. Must be run by teachers on summer break? I just had to sit back and chuckle…
Finally, on the outskirts of town, two tame Texas Longhorn steers are a faint reminder of times long gone…
Despite the fantasies of my youth, fueled by weekly doses of “Gunsmoke”, Dodge City is more of a tourist destination in my dreams than reality, more interesting as a snapshot of Kansas Americana than a big tourist destination. My exploration of “Kansas normality” continues as we work out way further northeast to central Kansas.
Next up: The “Hutch”
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