Ellsworth, the Cowtown and Fort

Among the shootings the plaque mentions is the one that cost Ellsworth its sheriff. On August 15, 1873, a gambling quarrel brought Ben and Billy Thompson into the street, armed, against policeman John Morco and John Sterling. Sheriff Chauncey Whitney came out unarmed and persuaded the brothers to walk with him for a drink. When Ben fired at the pair, a barrel of Billy's cocked shotgun went off into Whitney, who said it was an accident. He died on August 18. A jury acquitted Billy after a nine-day trial, and the town dismissed its whole police force.

What the plaque says

Ellsworth, the Cowtown and Fort When the Union Pacific built through here in 1867 this was buffalo country. As the engines chugged on west, the Hays newspaper reported: "Passengers on the cars between here and Ellsworth have almost daily fine sport shooting at buffalo, immense herds of the huge beasts constantly entering for races with the locomotives." Ellsworth, founded in 1867, was a main terminus of the Texas cattle trade in Kansas, 1871-1875. As such it was one of the wildest of the cowtowns. There were shootings and even a fabled tour down Main street by one of the dancehall girls in the costume of Lady Godiva. South of Ellsworth was the Mother Bickerdyke Home for old soldiers and their families, named for Mary Bickerdyke, famed Civil War nurse and social worker. Fort Ellsworth was established four miles southeast of this marker in 1864. Two years later it was renamed Fort Harker and in 1867 was moved northeast to present Kanopolis where four of its stone buildings may still be seen. Here General Sheridan planned the winter Indian campaign of 1868-1869. Other famous generals, including Grant, Sherman, Hancock, Miles and Custer, visited or were quartered at Harker. The post was abandoned in 1873. Erected by State Historical Society and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• S. P. Dinsmoor's Garden of Eden — 28 mi
  A Civil War veteran's limestone log cabin in Lucas, ringed by forty-foot cement trees, Adam and Eve, and his Populist sermon on the people who crucify labor, with the builder himself in the mausoleum.
• Cheyenne Bottoms and the Kansas Wetlands Education Center — 29 mi
  A 41,000-acre natural sink northeast of Great Bend, diked into shallow pools where a large share of the continent's migrating shorebirds stop to feed on the mudflats each spring and fall.

More markers nearby

• Historic Kansas — 10 mi
• Smoky Hills Region — 11 mi
• Frontier in Lincoln County — 22 mi