Get Out of Dodge! (True West Magazine)

True West - History of the American Frontier ^ | June 2022 | Paul Andrew Hutton

[COBOL2Java]

Since Dodge City was founded 150 years ago, the Kansas cowtown is still the reigning queen of the West

Seven years after it was founded in 1872, Dodge City was a booming cattle and railroad town

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“Queen of the Cowtowns” was the moniker historian Stanley Vestal bestowed on Dodge City, and the name stuck. The prairie town was certainly the most famous and longest lasting of the wild Kansas cattle towns that terminated the Chisholm and Western trails. Up from Texas came literally millions of long-horned cattle destined for the Kansas railheads and shipment east. They would feed a rapidly growing industrial nation. Infamous in its own day as a frontier Gomorrah, Dodge City has lived on in popular culture as the toughest of all the Western boomtowns, thanks to books—by popular writers including Vestal, Stuart Lake, Odie Faulk and Tom Clavin—but especially because of film and television (even outshining its pop culture rivals Tombstone and Deadwood).

The town was founded in the summer of 1872 by Col. Richard Dodge, along with several Army colleagues and post-sutler Robert Wright, on 87 acres of Ford County prairie near Fort Dodge in southwestern Kansas in hopes of capturing business traffic connected to the westward-building Santa Fe Railroad. With the arrival of the railroad the astute founders saw an opportunity to seize a portion of the lucrative Texas cattle trade.

[COBOL2Java]

The original Dodge City doesn't look anything like the one in "Gunsmoke", LOL. Good old Hollywood...

[Tupelo]

Looking at the photo of the Dodge City Peace Commission, I am struck by the short baby-faced guy second from the right on the back row. Luke Short.
When you walk down Allen Street in Tombstone there are small plaques telling this or that happened here on a certain date.
I found it interesting that Luke Short has two plaques commemorating him killing two men, in self defense. I think it was Bat Masterson that said Short was right handy with a Colt.

[Guenevere]

I watch a lot of Gunsmoke………

[Guenevere]

Thank you so much!

[AZJeep]

The present day Dodge City does not look like the old one.
It was raised and later rebuild like a tourist trap.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

As the article points out, the real Dodge was quite a bit wilder and rougher than it was portrayed. “Gunsmoke” hinted at some things, but I guess it was limited by the sensibilities of its time.

[SnuffaBolshevik]

“Gunsmoke” hinted at some things....."

Yeah.

I don't think Miss Kitty was the town librarian.

[Deepeasttx]

“Gunsmoke” hinted at some things...

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Except that Ms Kitty’s saloon was the only wild west one that the girls were proper and innocent. Only working there to get the cowboys to buy drinks. The only thing wrong about the ladies was the bad stereotype other places put on them.

But I diverge. Your premise still holds even in Ms Russell’s establishment.

[Deepeasttx]

You beat me by two-minutes!

[COBOL2Java]

I watch a lot of Gunsmoke………

I do also - although I have to say I'm partial to the B&W episodes. And I always got a laugh out of Chester.

[COBOL2Java]

The original “Gunsmoke” set was somewhere in Utah, I believe. And it’s still there, but almost totally in ruins.

[viewfromthefrontier]

The town was founded in the summer of 1872 by Col. Richard Dodge, along with several Army colleagues

Fascinating what all came out of the Civil War.

Thanks for posting!

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Once in a while you’ll see one of the girls going up or coming down the stairs with a cowhand. There are also a couple of episodes that have an upstanding rancher falling in love with one of the girls and she is surprised that he would want someone like her.

[Guenevere]

I like the black and white, too….
I have an affection for Festus, but Chester is special too!

Watching Gunsmoke keeps me calm in these turbulent times!

[Guenevere]

I think she and Matt were a ‘thing’……but in 19 years he never kissed her!

[Scrambler Bob]

I don’t think Miss Kitty was the town librarian.
= = =

So, she did not check out books?

[South Dakota]

Lots of cobblestone streets in the old part.
I don’t know how far back the old section of the business buildings go.
I liked Dodge

[Utah Binger]

Gunsmoke Kanab Utah

We're near there.

Maynard Dixon Legacy Museum