Dodge City, Kansas - A Wicked Little Town

Dodge City, Kansas

Later an editor of the Hays City Sentinel would write after visiting Dodge City, “Dodge is the Deadwood of Kansas. Her incorporate limits are the rendezvous of all the unemployed scallawagism in seven states. Her principal business is polygamy without the sanction of religion, her code of morals is the honor of thieves, and decency she knows not.”

In 1878, Doc Holliday arrived in Dodge City with Big Nose Kate Elder, posing as his wife. Settling in room 24 of the Dodge House, Doc mostly drank and gambled, but occasionally, he provided professional services to the towns people. Shortly after his arrival, an ad appeared in the Dodge City Times pronouncing: “J.H. Holliday, Dentist, very respectfully offers his professional services to the citizens of Dodge City and surrounding country during the summer.”

Doc Holliday was one of the most deadly shootists

in the American West

This image available for photographic prints HERE!

But mostly he was gambling at the Alhambra and dealing cards at the Long Branch Saloon. Though Dodge City citizens thought the friendship between Wyatt and Doc was strange, Wyatt ignored them and Doc kept the law while in Dodge City.

During those first years, the population varied according to the season, swelling during the summer with the influx of cowboys, cattle buyers, gamblers and prostitutes. Business houses, dance halls and saloons catered to the Texas trade. Gambling ranged from a game of five-cent "Chuck-aluck" to thousand dollar poker pots.

In June 1879, the Ford County Globe reported, “The boys and girls across the deadline had a high old time last Friday. They sang and danced, and fought and bit, and cut and had a good time generally, making music for the entire settlement. Our reporter summed up five knockdowns, three broken heads, two cuts and several incidental bruises. Unfortunately none of the injuries will prove fatal.”

Wyatt Earp

This image available for photographic prints HERE!

In September 1879, Virgil Earp sent word to Wyatt of the boom in Tombstone and Wyatt headed West with Doc Holliday following shortly thereafter. By January 1880, Bat Masterson also left Dodge City for the West.

In 1880, the Santa Fe Railroad reached Santa Fe, marking the death of the Santa Fe Trail and the many travelers passing through Dodge City. With the Indians effectively “lodged” on reservations, there was no longer a need for a military presence and Fort Dodge was closed in 1882. By 1886, the cattle drives had stopped.

An illustrious period of history was over but the legend lives on in Dodge City's historic preservation of its romantic and internationally famous Old West frontier history. Today, 100,000 tourists relive the legend each year by visiting the Boot Hill Museum and historic Front Street reconstruction.

Fort Dodge has been a Kansas State Soldier' Home since 1889.

Dodge City is located 150 miles west of Wichita in Southwest Kansas.

Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, © April, 2005

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Bat Masterson

This image available for photographic prints HERE!

DodgeCity-Great Western Hotel

Great Western Hotel courtesy Ford County

Historical Society , Dodge City, Kansas.

Great Western Hotel Today, David Alexander May, 2004.

This image available for photographic prints HERE!

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