Hamilton Butler Bell - Transforming Wicked Dodge City

Hamilton Bell - Dodge City Lawman

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Hamilton B. Bell He has always manifested a great regard and kindness for the old veterans of the Civil War, and was not only the means of securing the State Soldiers' Home at Fort Dodge, but when the district reunion of soldiers was held there Mr. Bell, almost wholly alone, secured and collected about $1,000 to defray expenses, besides which he contributed largely of his own means to their entertainment and comfort. It was through his efforts that the reunion was held there.

In 1910 he was appointed chief of police of Dodge City. That same year he erected one of the most modern automobile garages in Kansas, and has a large and well equipped auto livery, with an elegantly furnished ladies' rest room, one of the few of its kind in the West and a haven for auto tourists to Colorado.

Mr. Bell is a member of the American Auto Association and of the Touring Club of America. The penniless boy of forty-four years ago is today a wealthy man. He has made it in Kansas, by brawn, brain and intelligent and industrious effort. Besides his garage he has an 8,000-acre ranch near Dodge City, where he raises horses and is extensively engaged in the cattle business.

Mr. Bell was married on August 1, 1874, to Miss Josephine Dugan, a daughter of James Dugan, a farmer of Barber County, Kansas. To this union was born one son, Hamilton B. Bell, Jr., born November 22, 1876, who is now a traveling salesman, with headquarters at Salt Lake City, Utah. Mrs. Bell died on October 7, 1900. Mr. Bell is a Knight Templar Mason, a Noble of the Mystic Shrine, and a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. During the thirty-five years or more of his residence a Dodge City no citizen has been more closely identified with its upbuilding and with the development of southwestern Kansas than has Mr. Bell. Generous to a fault, he has both made and spent fortunes, but he still remains an active and energetic business man, wealthy, popular, and occupying an enviable position in the love and esteem of his fellow citizens.

Excerpted from the book: KANSAS: A Cyclopedia of State History,

Standard Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois, 1912

Added June, 2008

Editor's Note: After this 1912 account, Hamilton Bell continued to live in Dodge City until his death in 1947. He was the longest living Old West Sheriff and Marshal in the history of the American West and outlived all his Western associates. Living in lawless Dodge City during its boisterous cattle days, he was acquainted and or friends with such men as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Luke Short, Bat Masterson and numerous other colorful characters of the Old West. The rigid, stand-up lawman who seldom drew his guns and never shot a man during his 30 years of law enforcement, arrested more outlaws, with a warrant, than any other lawman in the West. He retired about 1911 and, at the age of ninety, was operating a pet shop in Dodge City, selling canaries, his favorite bird.

Dodge City, Kansas, 1876.

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