Dodge City: Cowboy Capital

Dodge City's cattle years were set by a line on a map. Texas Longhorns carried a tick that spread Texas cattle fever, and Kansas farmers won a quarantine line keeping the herds out of the settled east. In 1876 the legislature moved the line west again, cutting Abilene and the other cowtowns out of the trade and leaving Dodge as the queen of the cow towns. In 1884 the town briefly had a bullring, where Mexican bullfighters faced chosen Longhorns. In 1885 the quarantine was extended across the whole state, and the Western Trail was all but shut down.

What the plaque says

Dodge City: Cowboy Capital "If you stood on the hill above Dodge City, there was traffic as far as you could see, 24-hours a day, seven days a week on the Santa Fe Trail." —Henry L. Sitler, early settler Fort Dodge was established on the Santa Fe Trail in 1859 to protect wagon trains and as a supply base for U.S. troops. Six years later Sitler built a sod house near here, and Dodge City was born. With the arrival of the railroad in 1872, the steady stream of hunters and cowboys increased. They found stores, a blacksmith, a dance hall, and a saloon. The railroads shipped 1.5 million buffalo hides to buyers in the east over the next six years. When the buffalo were gone—due to the over hunting of herds for hides— Texas longhorns driven to Dodge supplied the demand for meat in the eastern U.S. Dodge City had little law enforcement until 1876 when W.B. "Bat" Masterson and Wyatt Earp became lawmen. These famous personalities led to the legendary appeal of this "Wild West" town, which continues today. The Dodge City Downtown Historic District is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Erected by the State of Kansas

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Boot Hill Museum — 1.5 mi
  Dodge City's museum on the site of the original Boot Hill cemetery, a 1950s replica of Front Street built around a collection one family began gathering in the 1870s.
• Santa Fe Trail Ruts west of Dodge City — 8.5 mi
  Two miles of wagon swales up to 400 feet wide on a grass hillside above the Arkansas, nine miles west of Dodge City, a National Historic Landmark seen from a pull-off on US-50.

More markers nearby

• Fort Dodge — 6.2 mi
• The Road to Santa Fe — 8.1 mi
• The Santa Fe Trail — 17 mi
• Fort Dodge-Camp Supply Military Road — 20 mi