Travels with Twinkles: Dodge City, Kansas

October 15 - 17, 2017:

A cold start today of about 40 degrees, but the sun was bright a by the time we reached Dodge City it was in the 70’s. The drive was on route 61 south to route 50 west all the way through mostly corn and soy bean farm country. We passed through several small towns, I stopped at two, Belpre and Kinsley for a quick look. They both seemed deserted, nothing open and no one on the streets on a Sunday morning, but we are in the bible belt here. We are now in the vicinity of the Santa Fe Trail and there are roadside historical markers at intervals, I like to catch them when I can. We pass through a huge array of wind turbines, hundreds of them practical surrounding the town of Spearville.

The skyscaper grain elevators at Belpre, Kansas

Knights of Pythias building in Kinsley, Kansas with great window paintings

Miles and miles of wind turbines at Spearville, Kansas

We have a full hookup campsite at the Blue RV Campground in Dodge City, the first in a while, but it’s kind of a dumpy campground. It’s a strange place, the owner doesn’t seem to be around, you just fill out an envelop with your payment and put it in the drop box.

I first do a cruise in the old downtown area with many sidewalk medallions mostly for Gunsmoke related characters and artistic iron signs on street poles. It becomes apparent that a high percentage of residents are hispanic by the downtown stores. There is a great Carnegie Library converted into art art gallery and a 1930’s era Post Office. Most of the streets are brick and rough in places especially at intersections, I bottomed out the jeep fsuspension on one of them. The Boot Hill area where the museum is located is adjacent to the downtown. Boot Hill was the original frontier burial ground, where you might be buried with your boots on. This only lasted for a brief period of time, but the legend will never die. Extending a mile or so to the south west is the new business area with many chain stores, motels and restaurants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_City,_Kansas

Dodge City Welcome sign at the stockyard overlook

Dodge's famous Longhorn Steer called "El Capitan"

The Carnegie Library is now an art center

Doc Holliday sculpture

There are many of these metal signs around downtown
hanging from street light poles

Also many sidewalk medallions

Classic old sculpture in front of the Boot Hill Distillery

Corn is king here

The Santa Fe Train Depot with attached Harvey House
Hotel and Restaurant. The Depot is still used for Amtrak service,
the rest is now the the Depot Theater Company and city offices

On Monday morning we go to the Boot Hill Museum expecting it to be a mostly tacky western “Gunsmoke” movie and wild west memorabilia museum. We were pleasantly surprised to find a well done museum, great exhibits with real historic articles, good recreated buildings and several original buildings. It really portrays an accurate picture of how Dodge City came to be, the good, the bad and the ugly (mostly ugly). I wish I could say it has evolved into something beautiful, but it hasn’t. Similar events occurred at many other towns during the period of western “Manifest Destiny” inspired settlement, but Dodge City being at the crossroads of the Santa Fe Trail, the Buffalo herds, the Indian country, the coming of the railroad and then the cattle drives intensified the action here.

The entrance to the Boot Hill Museum

ATSF Locomotive that has run about a million miles and
if it could talk would have some incredible stories to tell

All you ever hear about is Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson
but Ham Bell was a marshall at Dodge City and other
areas in Kansas for 36 years

The remains of the Boot Hill cemetery is just fake wooden
crosses as the bodies were removed years ago, but this
is the actual spot

Love these old paintings of the indians hunting Buffalo

Once there were millions, then the railroad came, then the
hunters came, then the military strategy of killing the Buffalo
to kill the native Americans and within a decade they
almost became extinct

Next the cattlemen came

The taking of the west wasn't a pretty picture, but the TV
westerns did a great job of romanticizing it

Half of these buildings are fake but they really do have great exhibits inside

The interior of the Long Branch Bar is really well done
and that guy in the corner could really play the piano

The frontier women used a corset like this
achieve the shapely look

Bat Masterson's Letter to Colt firearms
was so well written and he knew exactly
what he wanted in his pistol

A photo of the Dodge City Cowboy Band

George Hoover a real hero of Dodge City who started
the first bank, served as mayor four times in addition
to many other city, county and state positions. He left
$100,000 to the city on his dealth. He said "I made my
money here, I'm going to leave it here"

Toothless Nell's last words, I had a good mother

The "good old cattle barons" in a group photo

The Santa Fe Trail came right through Dodge City and it follows route 50 along the Arkansas River and the BSNF Railroad west across Kansas. A few miles west of Dodge is a roadside marker at a site called the “Cache” where in 1823 a group had to dig holes to cache their trade goods for the winter, walk to Taos to get new pack animals and return to retrieve their goods in the spring. A few miles further west is another roadside stop where a short path leads you to a place where they say you can still see Santa Fe trail wagon ruts. We looked pretty hard, but couldn’t see anything definite, but I’m sure they are there.

That's Twinkles out there looking for the ruts

I bet those guys would be very surprised to know that
there is now a monument for what they did ?

We then continued to the town of Cimarron which was where you had a trail choice, to continue along the “Mountain route” along the Arkansas River and over Raton Pass with water or to take the “dry route” known as the “Cimarron Cutoff”. The advantage of the Cimarron Cutoff was that it was a shorter route that saved about ten travel days but at a greater risk. Most people took the shorter route.

http://newmexicohistory.org/places/cimarron-cutoff-of-the-santa-fe-trail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Trail#Cimarron_Cutoff

The town of Cimarron doesn’t seem interested in promoting their history, we saw no historical signs in town, but it appears to be a well kept, quiet place to live. The only store of interest was the "Clark Drug" store with a beautiful soda fountain.

The clean sidewalk in front of Clark Drug

The beautiful soda and ice cream fountain inside

Back in Dodge, I take a ride across the railroad tracks to the enormous “National Beef” plant that spews out those nasty odors that sometimes blow to our RV park. The adjacent area is mostly cattle yards, railroad and trucking yards and other nasty looking related operations. Dodge City is home to EXCEL Corporation and National Beef, two of the largest beef processing plants in the country, possibly in the world.

Also across the railroad tracks and over the Arkansas River is a very depressed looking hispanic area. The Arkansas River is bone dry presently, irrigation and the cities water demands have lowered the water table, but it still periodically floods after prolonged rainy spells, I saw photos of flood waters at the Boot Hill Museum.
To be fair, there are nice areas in Dodge City as the beautiful, well maintained city park, Wright Park, with a band shell, the "Hoover Pavilion" and a 9-11 war memorial. Also on the outskirts of town is the fairly new huge United Arena and Boot Hill Casino and Resort.