Hunnewell, Kansas.
In the 1880s, as cowtowns in Kansas thrived by shipping beef east, the small town of Hunnewell emerged as another shipping point for Texas cattle. Located on the Kansas-Oklahoma border in Sumner County, the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston Railroad provided quick access to the Kansas City stockyards. During Hunnewell’s heyday, it sported a hotel, two stores, a barbershop, a couple of dance halls, and eight or nine saloons. With little more than railroad workers and cowboys, violence was not at all uncommon. As one railroad worker recollected years later, “There was no Bat Masterson to control the casual use of firearms, and there was more shooting than I ever saw in Dodge City.”
During this time, two cowboys named Oscar Halsell and Clem Barfoot were raising cane in Hanley’s Saloon on October 5, 1884. When two lawmen walked into the saloon and tried to quiet the disturbance, all hell broke loose with guns blazing. No one knows who fired first, but it is believed Clem Barfoot fired the first shot. Several shots followed, resulting in Barfoot being killed and Deputy Sheriff Ed Scotten mortally wounded.
No one was ever prosecuted, and although publicized at the time, the gunfight was soon forgotten. Oscar Halsell became a prosperous rancher and later employed notable outlaws such as Bill Doolin and George “Bittercreek” Newcomb. Halsell was also a close friend of later U.S. Marshal Evett D. Nix.
Saloon Gunfight.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated October 2026.
Also See:
Hunnewell – Cow Town to Ghost Town
See Sources.