Dodge City History

Some of the best travel guides ever written in the U.S. were produced in the late 1930s by the WPA's Federal Writers Project. These guides served as the forerunners for the Fodors, Fieldings, Lonely Planet, etc., books we now have. The WPA state and city guides were uniformly well-written and thoroughly researched.

Here's just a brief excerpt from the eight pages on Dodge City found in the The WPA Guide to 1930s Kansas (available through Amazon & probably other booksellers).

"In 1872 railroad construction gangs established headquarters ... A townsite was laid out later in the year, under the name of Dodge City, by A.A. Robinson, chief engineer of the Santa Fe Railway. In September the first passenger train pulled into the drab little town, bringing the advance influx of immigrants, buffalo hunters, card sharps, gamblers, and adventurers -- the heterogenous, transient population that gave early Dodge City its questionable but picturesque reputation. ...

Revenue was unbelievably large from the great herds of buffalo on the plains ... When this industry was at its height, R. M. Wright, Dodge City historian, estimated that 25 million of these animals were in the Dodge City hunting territory; and added that many persons as well informed as himself put the probable number at 100 million. Hunters could travel for days without losing sight of the vast herds. ...

The era of the buffalo hunter was comparatively brief. Before the end of 1875 the great herds of shaggy animals were practically exterminated. But the railroad was responsible for a greater industry pushing its way into Dodge City -- the cattle industry. Milling, bawling, Texas longhorns, driven by hundreds of cowboys and trail bosses, came over the Texas Trail, a shortcut drifting west from the Chisholm Trail to Dodge City, where the herds were shipped east on the Santa Fe Railway, or driven north ... to the Union Pacific Railroad. ...

So, in 1882, Dodge City took its turn as the cowboy capital of the Southwest and rode high on the wave of prosperity. Outfits of cattlemen jostled freighters, hunters and soldiers in the streets that echoed to the ribald songs and yells of the cowboy, and the wild oaths of the bull-whacker and the muleskinner. ...

Most of the gunmen famous in the annals of the Southwest served terms as marshal or sheriff in the 'Cowboy Capital.' ... Bat Masterson, who came to Dodge City as a boy of eighteen in 1872, followed a varied career as sub-contractor for the railroad, buffalo hunter and scout before his election as sheriff in 1877. ... Sheriff Masterson wore clothes of the latest cut, a pearl gray bowler hat, and a diamond stickpin. He often carried a cane, but in spite of his foppish attire he was feared as one of the deadliest gunmen on the frontier. ..."

photo on left: Benjamin Hodges, in Dodge City with his sawed-off shotgun. Hodges was at various times a cowboy, lawman, gambler, and outlaw. From Western History/Genealogy Dept. Denver Public Library.

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note: for more on Dodge City History (web site of the Ford County Historical Society)