APPENDIX A
DODGE CITY HISTORICAL ESSAY
William M. Hunter, M.A.
Heberling Associates, Inc.
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Dodge City
Although seemingly remote, Dodge City has always linked to the broader world in
important ways. Dodge City, working through the urban centers of the Middle West, was the
meeting place of country and city where cattlemen from the prairie states accessed eastern
markets (Cronon 1991:211-212). Indeed, the ecological transformation of mixed prairie into
the current agriculture is but one manifestation of the interpenetration of city and country that
continues to characterize the production of landscape (Cronon 1991: 212).
The settlement of the area around Dodge by migrants from the Old Northwest
introduced agents of landscape change into a new environment, one dependent on weather
and climate and subject to drought (Cronon 1991:214). Only through extensive irrigation and
the development of special techniques could farmers consistently produce staple crops,
forcing many to adapt to the conditions and turn from the cultivation of wheat to the raising
of livestock. However, if livestock was to become the foundation of a new western
agriculture, farmers and ranchers had to transform the landscape by confining or eliminating
its original human and animal inhabitants, particularly the vast millions of American bison
(Cronon 1991:214).
Prior to advent of the railroad, the herd of bison was a defining feature of the
grasslands. With the introduction of the world economy into the region, market and sport
hunters prized the bison, like the earlier furbearing animals of the east and upper Midwest, as
commodities (Cronon 1991:216). The perfection of tanning bison hide by 1870 doomed the
herds. Richard Dodge noted “Buffalo were slaughtered without sense or discretion . . . where
there were myriads of Buffalo the year before there are now myriads of carcasses” (Cronon
1991:216). In Kansas, the culling of the herd peaked between 1870 and 1873, and within
four years of the introduction of the railroad and a market for hides, over four million buffalo
were exterminated from the southern plains, sealing the fate of the Great Plains Indians
whose ecological livelihood system was destroyed (Cronon 1991:217).
With the culling of the buffalo, hunters and others turned to horses, sheep, and
longhorn cattle as a replacement for the native stock. The economic disruption and embargos
of the Civil War era led to the explosion in the population of longhorn cattle in Texas, and
with southern markets shattered by the war, post war entrepreneurs discovered that a
longhorn was worth far more in the eastern markets, and searched for ways to get the surplus
cattle to market. They needed a place were the southern drover and northern buyer could
meet to do business (Cronon 1991:218-219).
The rapid construction of the Santa Fe Railroad across western Kansas along the
north bank of the Arkansas River led to formation of land and town improvement companies,
intent on staking a claim along the railroad line. The Dodge City Town Company, a
combination of military officers and Santa Fe planners, established their claim in August
1872, a full month before the formal survey of the railroad through the area (Shortridge
2004:146). Dodge was developed in relationship with the 100th meridian, which not only
demarcated the limits of federal land, but also the limits of military law, allowing Dodge City
to grow by providing liquor and entertainment. Beyond that, the city was to occupy the
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southern most point on the Santa Fe mainline, west of the meridian in an area considered too
droughty to provide for regular agricultural settlement, opening it to extensive use by the
cattle trade (Shortridge 2004:147).
In 1867, Texas longhorns were first shipped from Kansas to Chicago, an era of the
great cattle drives had begun. The Santa Fe railroad was active in promoting Dodge as a
cattle town, wide-open lands well suited to the needs of drovers, by developing a two-mile
long stockyard along its tracks. The traffic blossomed, from 9,540 head of cattle in the first
season (1876) to 65,000 head of cattle by 1882 (Shortridge 2004:147). To support its
operations, the railroad invested in additional facilities, including pens and machine shops.
Dodge City therefore developed as both a cattle town and as a railroad town (Shortridge
2004:147).
The great cattle drives, the interpenetration of city and county, are what gave Dodge
City both its history, and its heritage. The cowboy, now a mythical figure, was above all an
agent whose essential task was to deliver a fattened herd to the metropolitan market, “a wage
worker whose task was to ship meat to cities”(Cronon 1991:219-220). Abilene, Ellsworth,
Wichita, Caldwell, and Dodge City all briefly reigned as the principal terminus of the herd
driven north from Texas. However, the reign was short lived.
With the continued immigration of settlers, intent on farming and infill of countryside
surrounding the railheads, tensions between Texas cowboys and Kansas farmers, who
grappled with the destruction and diseases carried by the longhorns, led to government
intervention and a quarantine on Texas cattle. With the enclosure of the commons and the
assertion of local agricultural interests, the cattle trade shifted to the north and west. The
range had given way to ranches across the short grass prairie.
With the establishment of livestock ranching, the ecological transformation of the
regional landscape began in earnest, with herds now confined within property boundaries,
and interests competed to secure rights to the best grazing land and any source of water,
bringing subtle shifts in regional vegetation (Cronon 1991:221). Further, the practice of
ranching also heralded the era of enclosure, as the recently (1873) perfected barbed wire
fences soon demarked property, formed barriers to movement, and help to transform prairie
into pasture (Cronon 1991:221).
The flood of grass fed cattle into the eastern markets forced the cattle producers of the
Old Northwest to innovate, to take advantage of their regional situation, and overcome high
land values and smaller farm size. Their innovation was the development of the feedlot for
fattening young cattle from the plains on Midwestern corn. Thus, Longhorn drives in Texas,
cattle towns in Kansas, and feedlots in Illinois became linked together in a “new animal
landscape that was governed as much by economics and ecology” (Cronon 1991:224).
The consolidation of the stock trade in Chicago and its logic of efficiency, which
initially funneled the stock into Illinois from a vast region, soon led the dispersal of the meat
packing industry back into hinterland. By the 1880s, the successful models of livestock
processing were applied throughout the Midwest and plains states, in Kansas City, Omaha,
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East St. Louis and St. Joseph (Cronon 1991:257). By the turn of the century, the combined
output of former hinterland rivaled that of Chicago. With the collapse of the early cattle
trade, Dodge City found itself in a stronger position than other western boomtowns. The
relative fertility of the region’s soil, the persistence of grazing land, and the development of
Dodge as the seat of Ford County and distribution center for the emerging agricultural
economy ensured its economic viability in the wake of the bust.
In 1883, the entrepreneur Asa T. Soule founded the Eureka Irrigation Canal Company
to divert water from the Arkansas River for farm use. Soule had invested heavily in Dodge
City, donating land for a college that would eventually become the site of St. Mary of the
Plains College. For four years, hundreds of workers constructed a canal from a point twenty
miles upriver from Dodge across country to the community of Spearville, a canal nearly
twenty miles in length. Opened in 1888, the canal briefly relieved the threat of drought,
although changes to the climate and the lowering of the water table soon made the canal
obsolete, prefiguring the desiccation of the Arkansas River.
The aggressive development and promotion of the town in the early twentieth century
is evident throughout the landscape. Progressive local elites embraced planning, municipal
reform, a city-manger plan of government, and an ethic of civic improvement to tame the
rougher edges of the former frontier town. The development of landmark buildings, including
the 1906 Dodge City municipal building, 1913 Ford County courthouse, 1917 country club,
and 1929 city hall represents the desire of local elites to create a civic landscape beyond that
of the western myth (Faulk 1977:193). The sparse population of the region also slowed the
development of competing urban centers, although the three population centers of Dodge
City, Garden City, and Liberal emerged, each to control trade without rivalry with the others
prior to the automobile era (Shortridge 2004:264).
Yet, in spite of a concerted exorcism, the debt to the cowboy and longhorn persisted
throughout the local scene. For example, among the artifacts that have been collected on
Boot Hill is Dr. O.H. Simpson’s cement statue of a cowboy, relocated to Boot Hill from the
lawn of city hall to join his statue of two steer heads. The invocations of the plaques at the
base of the statues expressed a sentiment that, at the time, was viewed as backward looking:
“on the ashes of my campfire this city is built” and “my trails have become your highways”
(Faulk 1977:195).
Throughout mid-century, the Dodge City economy was buoyed by its county seat
functions, the ongoing operation of the Santa Fe repair shops, the small regional
wholesalers, the Dodge City Flour Mill – a symbol of large scale grain farming – and
development of St. Mary of the Plains College as the only institution of higher learning in the
region (Shortridge 2004:264). The initial development of the Boot Hill Museum in 1931
marked both an acceptance of the changes in the agricultural economy and the rise of the
automobile economy; in 1947, the Jaycees became the administrators of Boot Hill Museum,
building the recreation of Front Street in 1958, just prior to the urban renewal and destruction
of the real Front Street. Unlike the trend toward specialization seen in Garden City (sugar
beets) and Liberal (natural gas), Dodge City relied on a diversified, if traditional, economic
development program.
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The representation of Dodge City in the movies and the links to Hollywood became
stronger in the late Depression era, peaking with the premier of Dodge City, starring Errol
Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, and Ann Sheridan, in Dodge on April 1, 1939. The popularity of
the film and revival of western themed popular culture led to Dodge branding itself “The
Cowboy Capital of the World.” The many farcical representations of Dodge in film and
novels led many tourists to the town in search of sites that were often the fancy of Hollywood
writers. Building on a popular stunt by Dr. Simpson – the placement of cast concrete skulls
and boots around mock graves on Boot Hill during a 1932 Rotarians convention – town
boosters began to embrace the development of tourist attractions to satisfy the imagination of
the tourists (Faulk 1977:196-197).
The modern history of Dodge is also lost in the mélange of images of the mythic
west. For example, the haunting relic landscape of the Dodge City Air Field, which includes
a number of brick chimneys now devoid of their buildings, hangars, and the weed covered
runway, is a continuation of the military history that links Dodge City to other Kansas towns
and the nation at large (Faulk 1977:193). Dodge City, the “metropolis of southwestern
Kansas,” maintained its title as the most populous city through 1950, though its dominance in
the region began to fade in the post war era, in spite of the careful maintenance of civic
institutions by the local elites (Shortridge 2004:264). Interrupted by World War II, the
efforts to create a Dodge City of the imagination began in earnest in the post war era.
The post-war years marked the increasing popularity of the mythic West among an
American population that had become both industrialized and urbanized, and suddenly
exposed to mass marketed entertaining and marketing. In 1947, a collection of town civic
organizations, led by the Jaycees, broke ground on Boot Hill to recreate the cemetery, add
some fanciful elements, and build a museum around a collection of locally held artifacts
(many donated by the Beeson family), and later, a skeleton exhumed near the site (Faulk
1977:197). Local officials promoted an annual festival to lure tourists and support the local
economy through the visits and sale of souvenirs. The popularity of the radio and television
series Gunsmoke reinforced the tourist economy, resulting in the recreation of Front Street at
the base of an excavated Boot Hill.
In the modern era, each of the three largest cities in southwestern Kansas bucked a
model of decline, more than doubling in population between 1950 and 2000; Dodge City
grew from a population of 11,252 people in 1950 to 25,176 in 2000 – and was still outpaced
by its two regional rivals (Shortridge 2004:342). Unlike its balanced and traditional
economic development approach in the first half of the century, Dodge’s modern growth is a
result of specialization in the form of the meatpacking industry, the embrace of the feedlot
system, and the rising popularity of center pivot irrigation technology.
The production of landscape in Dodge City and Ford County was and is inexorably
linked to the moving and processing of livestock. The meat packing industry requires a
constant supply of water, which literally flows through the facilities. The management of
water was of constant concern to the developers of the town. From the management of
springs and wells by the drovers, to the problem of water and public health exposed by the
cholera epidemics that swept Fort Dodge, to the modern attempts to grow crops in a semiA-5
arid environment, the region’s farmers never hesitated to manipulate the landscape in search
of solution. Widespread adoption of CPI technology as a way to utilize the Ogallala aquifer
quickly made the ditch system obsolete, creating a layered landscape of water management
throughout the region (Shortridge 2004:343). With abundant water and cheap fuel,
southwestern Kansas saw a dramatic increase in irrigated lands through the 1960s and 1970s,
most of which shifted to the production of feed crops and an increase in the cattle population.
Faced with outdated facilities in increasingly crowded urban areas, the meatpacking industry
turned its attention to the small cities of southwestern Kansas (Shortridge 2004:343).
Accustomed to regional economic dominance and diversified economy, the transition
to the meatpacking economy was more difficult than in other cities. As recently as the 1960s,
Dodge City seemed economically secure with its blend of railroad related investment,
wholesale and retail trade, tourism boosted by the popularity of Gunsmoke, and the only fouryear college in the region. Each institution would falter, with the sharp decline of tourist
traffic, loss of the Santa Fe Shops, decline in the retail sector and finally, with the closing of
St. Mary’s of the Plains (Shortridge 2004:346).
The success of the first modern meatpacking enterprise in Garden City in 1965
showed the industry the benefits of both the regional amenities and the friendly local
government that helped link the modern industry to the cattle drives of the 1870s. The large
number of cheap cattle, the rise of a regional economic ensemble, and pro-development
governments balanced the problems of transportation and the more serious problem of a
labor supply in the sparsely-populated region.
The shifts in the geographic scale that occurred with the development of the Interstate
Highway system through Kansas and the improvement of the state highway system have
transformed both the actual and imaginative geographies of Dodge City. No longer located
on the principal thoroughfare, Dodge experienced a sustained drop in tourist traffic. In 1977,
author Odie Faulk noted some of the same problems that still confront Dodge, noting “the
center of town is dilapidated, with decaying buildings housing businesses struggling to
compete with more modern shopping centers on the fringes of the city . . . [yet] history is a
local business, one good for the economy of the town” (Faulk 1977:198). Yet, it was the rise
of the diesel truck and improvements in transportation that undermined the tendency toward
consolidation of the meatpacking industry that the railroad system had promoted and led to
the diffusion of the meatpacking industry even further into the traditional hinterland, closer to
the cattle and the labor needed to process them (Cronon 1991:259).
With development of the Arkansas Valley’s irrigation potential, HyPlains Dressed
Beef established a small plant amid the growing feedlots in Dodge City in 1972. However,
the long tradition of Dodge’s economic vitality may have discouraged local interests from
embracing the industry in the manner of its competitors. With the success of Iowa Beef
Processor in luring a Mexican and Vietnamese pool of labor to Garden City, Excel
Corporation of Wichita moved quickly to develop the facility on the eastern edge of Dodge
in 1980, suddenly changing the economic and demographic character of the town (Shortridge
2004:344). Unlike Garden City and Liberal, the Dodge City community has had less cordial
relationship between long time residents and new immigrant workers. In the recent past,
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National Beef purchased the small HyPlains facility expanding its capacity to 1,010 workers,
and Cargill acquired Excel, boosted production, and expanded its Dodge City workforce to
2,560 workers (Shortridge 2004:346).
The landscape of Dodge City, though largely the product of historical forces that
post-date its reign as Queen of the Cowtowns, retains many reminders of the mythologized
American West. What empty spaces there are, are often filled in by the imaginations of
visitors (DeLyser 2001:24). The landscape of Dodge City may appear to most visitors, as
well as to many residents, to be a landscape of a specific historical past, instead of a
landscape that three generations have reinterpreted to convey meanings and associations that
are unlike what the original landscape authors had in mind (DeLyser 2001:24-25). Historian
C. Robert Haywood explored in detail the many histories hidden by the mythic west,
focusing on the “neglected society” of ordinary (middle class) life after the cattle era.
Many aspects of Dodge City history and heritage are underrepresented in the
narrative histories, the landscape, and within the imagination. Perhaps the greatest
underrepresented aspect of the history and heritage of the region, particularly in light of the
current demography, is that of the Catholic Church and its communicants, early and
important contributors to the Dodge City scene. The heritage is present, in the form of the
Coronado Cross that commemorates the first celebration of the Catholic mass in the region,
in the Sacred Heart Cathedral that is one of the tallest and highest buildings in downtown
Dodge, and the modern Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the first cathedral church built
in the 21st century. Yet, within the discussion of history and heritage tourism, this particular
aspect of the region was unmentioned.
Beyond the establishment of the mass in the 16th century, Catholics were instrumental
in the establishment and development of Dodge City. A Jesuit priest celebrated the first
modern mass in the region at Fort Dodge in 1869, and three Catholics were among the seven
founders of the city (Faulk 1977:120-121). The church assigned a resident priest in 1875, the
year of Dodge City’s establishment. To establish a Catholic presence in the broader region, a
monastery was established at Windthorst in 1878, the beginning of a small German Catholic
community. The edifice that became Sacred Heart Cathedral was built on the town
promontory in 1882 (Faulk 1977:121).
The landscape of Dodge City reflects a long American fascination with the mythic
West, as seen within the Anglo-American imagination, refracted as it is through film, art,
advertising, fiction, and legend. The Dodge historian Robert Haywood noted that the
geographic imagery of Dodge City is a “mythical realm, set apart from the rest of the United
States” (1991:xi). The historian Richard White noted that the West is one of the most
imagined regions on earth (White 1991:613). Along with similar towns like Tombstone,
Arizona, and Deadwood, South Dakota, Dodge City represents the last of the “wide open
frontier towns” of both myth and reality (Faulk 1977:191). Yet, unlike its contemporaries,
Dodge was first built in a boom around the Cowboy and was able to sustain itself and grow
in the wake of the inevitable bust.
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That most of the historic fabric of the nineteenth century is absent, and much of the
landscape has been filled with modern additions, does not necessarily undermine the
evocative power of the Dodge City of the imagination. Haywood notes that Dodge City had
ceased to be wild soon after its establishment, and the dominant impress of material culture
owed more to Victorian fashion than western ethos (1991). That is not say that visitors will
not notice the absences, but that the absence need not stand in the way of their finding the
mythic West in place. In Dodge, the landscape is as important for what is missing as for what
remains (DeLyser 2001:30).
Visitors to Dodge also confront the changes in environment beyond material culture,
notably the quiet of the modern downtown and reproduction of Front Street at Boot Hill, with
the exception of train and automobile traffic, as well as the introduction of the unmistakable
odor of the feedlots and packing plants. The majority of tourist visitors to Dodge are white
and middle class, although the many Hispanic transients and their families who pass through
Dodge are not represented in tourism figures. Unlike the settlers who tried to recreate eastern
landscapes and lifestyles in Kansas, visitors to Dodge carry “cultural knowledge of the
mythic West” with them, which is seen in or through the landscape as it is, excusing the less
popular aspects of history that are present and overlooking the absences (DeLyser 2001:24).
The Dodge City that visitors experience stands for much more than its specific history. The
material fragments of Dodge City at its peak suffice to spark the imagination of visitors.
Yet, to oppose a mythic West to the reality of contemporary Dodge City is to “create
a false dichotomy and collapse a completely intertwined history” (DeLyser 2001:25-26). Just
as the historical reality of Dodge City helped to create the mythic West, the mythic West
helped to create Dodge City as a place. From journalists to television actors, the widespread
dissemination of exaggerated tales of the west led many western towns to live up to their
reputations. The reconstructed Front Street may not be authentic, but to the visitor, it
“satisfies a need” (Faulk 1977:199). Because of staffing issues and museum practices, the
artifacts displayed throughout the recreated Front Street are separated from the visitors,
literally behind glass. Some have noted the sense of detachment from the artifacts, while
others noted the potential of limiting access even further, of engendering the voyeuristic
enthusiasm of looking into a space through a window and imagining what is inside (DeLyser
2001:31). If anything, the well maintained Front Street, devoid of wear and broken elements
such as windows, forms something of barrier to the notion of the mythic west.
The production of landscape in Dodge City was influenced by the diffusion of both
material and abstract culture from the east, as well as the adaptation of those transplanted
practices to entirely note environmental and social conditions. Environmental hazards have
long played a role in the making of the regional landscape. Dramatic events like the blizzard
that heralded the end of the cattle era, to the tornadoes, to the massive floods of 1942 and
1965 that led to federal construction of the massive flood control measures that line the now
dry bed of the Arkansas River, the landscape reflects a struggle against a difficult
environment.
In southwestern Kansas, Dodge City is one of three cities that dominate economic
activity in the region, and in spite of cooperative ventures and cross promotion, must
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recognize that it is competing with Liberal and Garden City for resources and trade. Each
community has grown in the past decade; each boasts viable institutions, and each is dealing
with demographic and cultural changes because of the meatpacking industry. Yet, Dodge
City must somehow parley its unique history and imagined heritage into a positional good to
offset some of the advantages of rival Garden City, which is equidistant from the urban
centers of Amarillo, Colorado Springs, and Wichita and has been far more aggressive in
diversifing its economic and cultural outlook, particularly in regard to new immigrants.
REFERENCES
Cronon, W.
1991
Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. W.W. Norton & Company,
Inc., New York.
DeLyser , D.
2001 When Less is More: Absence and Landscape in a California Ghost Town. In
Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies. P. C. Adams, S.
Hoelsher and K.E. Till, editors. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
Minnesota.
Faulk, O.B.
1977
Dodge City: The Most Western Town of All. Oxford University Press, New
York.
Heywood, C. R.
1991 Victorian West: Class and Culture in Kansas Cattle Towns. University of
Kansas Press, Lawrence, Kansas.
Shortridge, J .R.
2004 Cities on the Plains: The Evolution of Urban Kansas. University Press of
Kansas, Lawrence.
White, R.
1991
Worster, D.
1979
“It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American
West. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford University Press, New
York.
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APPENDIX B
STAN HERD MURAL INSTALLATION
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3TAN(ERDCATTLEDRIVEANDRAILROADMURALS
APPENDIX C
DODGE CITY’S DIGITAL MEDIA CENTER
CONCEPTUAL SUMMARY
Tom Zachman
KONQ/KDCC
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DODGE CITY’S DIGITAL MEDIA CENTER
CONCEPTUAL SUMMARY
Tom Zachman, KONQ/KDCC
Dodge City, KS
THE PARTY’S ON THE INTERNET!
Traditional Mass Media companies are facing new challenges in reaching an
audience that has modified its behavior by relying more on internet sources for their
information and entertainment. The most dynamic shift is in the way internet surfers
are now ‘pulling’ their information and entertainment in a time frame that suits them.
Conventional Media Broadcasters can only hope that their audience is tuned-in
when they ‘push’ their message. This problem is extremely evident when airing paid
advertising.
A DIGITAL MEDIA CENTER!
Conceptually, the DODGE CITY DIGITAL MEDIA CENTER is an independent
‘go to’ source for the creation and dissemination of all Audio, Video, Text and
Graphics necessary for Dodge City area entities wishing to promote their
organization and events.
Additionally, businesses should be provided the
opportunity to buy-in and join the Party.
The creation of the DODGE CITY DIGITAL MEDIA CENTER to produce
information and entertainment pieces for ‘Netcasting’ that Surfers can download,
view and share at their convenience will provide a Promotional Outlet for Dodge City
that will be freely available for decades.
DYNAMIC DIGITAL PRESENCE!
Very quickly, new wireless internet broadcasting technologies (commonly called
WiMax) will be implemented throughout this region and the globe. Dodge City
should begin building a truly interactive Web presence that rides along this
broadcasting stream. This website should include real-time voice/video broadcasts
to these newly deployed WiMax mobile receivers.
Additionally, another website format (commonly called “dot Mobi”) is being
developed to provide low-bandwidth transmissions to small-screen devices such as
Blackberrys and cell phones. Dot Mobi communication will become instrumental in
providing real-time information to travelers wanting current information regarding
lodging, weather and special events.
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WHAT IS NECESSARY TO GET STARTED?
Modern equipment, current software and aggressive Professionals.
10/11/2008
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APPENDIX D
AG EXPO CENTER
CONCEPTUAL PLANS
Dodge City, Kansas
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APPENDIX E
A BEEF VISITOR/EDUCATION CONCEPT
The following concept for a beef industry-related education center
was developed by a local resident who believes that such a center
would be of interest to area visitors and residents.
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