Pale caprock bluffs stand above a broad green valley on the Cimarron National Grassland.
NPS / public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Kansas · Region

Dodge City & the Southwest

Boot Hill and the trail ruts west of Dodge, Point of Rocks on the Cimarron National Grassland, Liberal's bomber-field air museum and Garden City's zoo.

6 places to explore

Dodge City sits on the 100th meridian, the line John Wesley Powell took in 1879 as the rough boundary of country where farming could count on rain. The Arkansas runs west from Dodge past Cimarron, Garden City and Lakin to Syracuse along US-50, and the Santa Fe Trail ran with it until the Cimarron Route struck off southwest across waterless country toward the Cimarron River and the corner of the state at Elkhart.

This was the hunting country of the Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Cheyenne and Arapaho, and once the railroads came, hired hunters shot the bison herds down from millions to fewer than 500. Coronado's party is thought to have crossed the Arkansas near Ford in June 1541. Dodge City was laid out in 1872 at the west edge of the Fort Dodge military reservation and lived on hides, then cattle; nine miles west, the trail's ruts still cross the grass.

The southwest corner suffered the worst of the Dust Bowl, and the government bought out Morton County's broken farms and restored them as the Cimarron National Grassland, the largest public land in Kansas. Today it is feedlot, packing plant and gas field country: Garden City had the first commercial feed yard in the Midwest, and Stevens County sits on the center of the Hugoton gas field.

What to See in Dodge City & the Southwest

6 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Natural Areas

From the caprock of Point of Rocks, the view falls over cottonwoods along the Cimarron River and a faint trail trace across the grassland.

Cimarron National Grassland and Point of Rocks

Elkhart

The largest public land in Kansas, 108,175 acres of shortgrass and sand sage along the usually dry Cimarron, where a bluff capped with white calcrete gave Santa Fe Trail drivers their landmark.

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Sandsage Bison Range and Wildlife Area

Garden City

The 3,760-acre remnant of the Kansas National Forest south of Garden City, where federal tree planting failed and the state's oldest publicly owned bison herd now grazes sand sage prairie.

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Historic Sites

The false-front shops of the Front Street replica at Boot Hill Museum, with picnic tables on the lawn before them.

Boot Hill Museum

Dodge City

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.

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A concrete path and small bridges lead across the Santa Fe Trail ruts on the shortgrass west of Dodge City.

Santa Fe Trail Ruts west of Dodge City

Dodge City

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.

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Attractions

The pale stone arched entrance of Lee Richardson Zoo, its iron gates standing open.

Lee Richardson Zoo

Garden City

Garden City's zoo in Finnup Park, begun in 1927 with two skunks and now accredited, free to walk in and open to cars on a drive-through loop for a vehicle fee.

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A camouflaged F-105 Thunderchief and other jets parked on the apron outside the Mid-America Air Museum.

Mid-America Air Museum

Liberal

More than 100 aircraft in a former Beechcraft plant on the old Liberal Army Airfield, where nearly a third of all B-24 Liberator command pilots trained during World War II.

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Scenic Drives through Dodge City & the Southwest

Scenic Byway

The Santa Fe Trail: Council Grove to the Dodge City Ruts

About 240 miles of the Santa Fe Trail on US-56 and US-50, from the Osage council ground at Council Grove past Lost Springs, Lyons, Pawnee Rock and Fort Larned to Boot Hill and the ruts west of Dodge City.

240 mi · 5 hrs

Dodge City & the Southwest rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

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