Dykstra estimated that nine men were killed in the first year, with “another three as possibilities.” Dodge City historian Frederic R. The first two recorded killings in Dodge, however, had occurred back in September 1872, and the months that followed produced more carnage. In his study of Kansas’ cow town violence, The Cattle Towns, Robert Dykstra said that from 1876 through 1885, Dodge produced a total of 15 documented homicides, an average of only 11⁄2 per year. But when it came to man killing his fellow man, Dodge was not so gory during its glory years. Walking the streets of Dodge in those cattle-happy days were many of the most celebrated gunfighters of the West-Wyatt Earp, the Masterson brothers, Doc Holliday, Ben Thompson, Luke Short, Bill Tilghman, Mysterious Dave Mather and Clay Allison.ĭodge was said to have one saloon for every 50 residents, and no doubt those saloons were often rip-roaring. According to legend, Dodge City became the wickedest town in America in the late 1870s and early 1880s when it reigned as “Queen of the Cow Towns,” “Cowboy Capital” and “The Beautiful Bibulous Babylon of the Frontier.” Wild Texas herders, fresh from the Longhorn trail, hurrahed the town, tough lawmen attempted to hold them in check and gunfights became common occurrences. The town’s unsavory reputation as a place of wanton bloodletting stems from its first year of existence, when it was often called “Buffalo City,” years before it became a terminus of the Western Cattle Trail. Long before the Earps and Mastersons patrolled the streets of the ‘Cowboy Capital,’ the lawless town was a dangerous hangout for carousing soldiers, buffalo hunters and local herders.ĭodge City, Kansas, had a well-deserved reputation for violence, but its notoriety was not earned during its cow town years, as is generally believed.
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