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University Daily Kansan Monday. April 17. 1961
Cowboy's Life Lacked Hollywood Dash
By Dan Felger
Those familiar with the history of the cowboy know that the saddle-pounder of the past did not spend all his time shooting 12-shot six-shooters and kissing pretty school-marms.
He didn't even sit down by the hour and think of intricate plans to head 'em (whoever they were) off at the pass.
HIS ONLY claim to fame was his ability to herd cattle and fight rustlers and Indians, who would try to cut out a few head when he grew weary from many hours in the saddle. A rather unglamorous life for this modern-day Hollywood hero—yet by living it the way he did, the cowboy wrote his name in foot-high letters in the history of the past.
In Kansas, the life of the cowboy was no Hollywood script, either.
Every spring the cowboy and his trail boss rounded up the wild-eyed longhorns on the Texas plains and started the long drive northward to Abilene, Dodge City and the small cow towns of southeastern Kansas.
The trip was not an easy one. For days the cowboys rode weary hours in the saddle, sweat-bathed in the sun, dust-stung in the wind and bone-wet in the rain. The maps of the Chisolhm Trail and the other famous herd trails of the West existed only in the minds of the trail bosses—the loss of the way might mean parched, swollen tongues and a half herd of dead cattle.
The weary hours were spent to fill the pockets of the cowboys and their bosses with gold eagles and the plates of the eastern workingmen with juicy slabs of western beef.
THE CHISHOLM trail, immortalized through song and poem, began at San Antonio and ended in Abilene. The first great cattle drive was in 1868, and the roistering of the cowboys so worried the townspeople that they decided to take defensive measures.
The year 1869 saw a jailhouse erected in Abilene. The sheriff had bad luck with his first prisoner from the trail herds. He picked up a Negro who was the cook for one of the outfits, charging him with disorderly conduct.
The next night the irate cowboys tore down the jail and freed the cook, insuring themselves daily meals for at least the next few months.
Abilene and Dodge City were the two major shipping points in Kansas for the stockyards in Kansas City. At Kansas City the cattle were sold to feeders in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. Other cattle were sent to the huge stockyards in Chicago.
DodgeCityWasRobust Western Kansas Town
By Virginia Mathews
Not quite 100 years old, Dodge City, the Cowboy Capital of Kansas, still has Boot Hill and Front Street to remind it of the days when the bark of the six-gun and the whoops of celebrating cowpokes made it one of the wildest towns in the American West.
The old saying about the Dodge City, of Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp's time states:
"IT WAS DAY all day in the day-
time and never night at Dodge."
The rough, tough cow town started out in 1872 as a sod, board shack and tent town known as Buffalo City. The Santa Fe Railroad changed the town into a brawling little city. Entertainment was bizarre, with visitors treated to wolf hunts, bronco races and antelope chases. The townsfolk and transients were a motley group:
"Theodore Roosevelt, Russian Grand Duke Alexis, President Hayes, Sheridan and Custer jostled Mexican vaqueros, British lads, cattle barons, buffalo skinners, dance hall girls and sonaurs."
The Chisholm, Jones Plummer, Goodnight, Tascoas, Dodge City, Rath and Western trails crossed at Dodge. Dodge City was a major trading and shipping point for Texas cattle from 1873 to 1886.
The city was advertised as the "wickedest little city in America." The Colt.45 was more effective than the statute books in preventing crime, and the courts were heavy-handed. A Dodge City magistrate once said, "In my court you get a hell of a lot of law but damn little justice."
A poem by an unknown author describes Boot Hill, the town burying ground:
line most of 'em died of lead (Continued on page 14)
All American
and summer. Cattle drives made hamlets become villages and villages become towns overnight. But the end of the cattle drives spelled the end of the importance of many southeastern Kansas cow towns, such as Baxter Springs and Chetopa.
By 1910, the year of the last major cattle drive, King Grass had been deposed and miles of barbed wire had divided Kansas into checkerboards of wheatfields and pastures.
SOMETIMES RAIL service between Chicago and points east was disrupted, while at other times freight rates for shipping the beef were too high for the cattlemen. When this happened, the glut often backed up all the way to Abilene and Dodge.
Cattle drives were the chief concern of the cowboy during the spring
This was virtually disastrous, particularly when both towns were handling more than 150,000 headpiece, as they did the last half of the 1870s. From a rise near Abilene,
one might look down at the plains around and see 50,000 head during the times of railroad trouble. One year, 30,000 cattle could not be shipped and were driven out on the plains west of Abilene to fend for themselves during the winter. One outfit put 4,000 head to winter on the banks of the Republican River. In the spring, only 110 were found alive.
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