40 Fun Facts About Dodge City

Which long-running CBS Western, starring James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon, was set in Dodge City, Kansas?

Gunsmoke ran for 20 seasons on television, and in 1959 Dodge City renamed its downtown Walnut Street after the show.

Dodge City, staked out just ahead of the arriving railroad, took its name from what kind of nearby site?

An army fort five miles to the east, Fort Dodge, lent the town its name after the settlers' first choice turned out to be taken by another Kansas town.

Sitting on the open High Plains, Dodge City, Kansas, is often cited as which superlative among US cities?

Windiest is the label Dodge City often gets, thanks to an average wind speed of 13.9 mph that can whip even light snowfalls into blizzards.

In 2009, Dodge City, Kansas, became home to the first state-owned example of what in the United States?

A casino named Boot Hill opened that December under Kansas ownership, borrowing its Old West theme from the town's famous frontier cemetery.

Settlers first named Dodge City after which animal, whose hides and bones made the early town rich?

Buffalo City was the settlers' first pick, but another Kansas town already had the name. An estimated 1.5 million hides shipped out of Dodge City between 1872 and 1878.

By town founder Robert Wright's account, what served as the first jail in Dodge City for sobering up drunks?

A deep well, about fifteen feet down, held drunks who were lowered in and left until they sobered up. Wright recalled that it sometimes held several men at once.

Which actor, who directed and starred in the counterculture film Easy Rider, was born in Dodge City, Kansas?

Dennis Hopper was born in Dodge City in 1936. Easy Rider was his first film as a director, written with co-star Peter Fonda and Terry Southern.

What Spanish-style spectacle, with performers brought in from Mexico, did Dodge City stage in July 1884?

A bullfight held over the Fourth of July is remembered as the first real one staged in the United States, with the matadors actually using their swords.

In cattle-era Dodge City, what could not be carried north of the railroad tracks known as the deadline?

Firearms were banned north of the tracks by city ordinance, while the south side stayed wide open. In 1877 the town of 1,200 people had 19 businesses licensed to sell liquor.

The phrase 'get out of Dodge', inspired by Westerns set in Dodge City, urges a person to do what?

To leave somewhere fast is to get out of Dodge, a phrase traced to screen lawmen ordering villains out of the frontier town.

A bronze statue in Dodge City honors which assistant marshal who later fought at the O.K. Corral?

Wyatt Earp was appointed assistant marshal around May 1876, just as the Texas cattle herds began arriving in force.

Doc Holliday, who arrived in Dodge City in 1878, had earned his nickname with a degree in which field?

Dentistry was Holliday's trade: he graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery at 20, before tuberculosis and gambling pulled him west.

Which river, whose name Kansans pronounce differently from the state that shares it, flows past Dodge City, Kansas?

The Arkansas River, which locals pronounce 'Are-Kansas', guided thousands of freight wagons west along its north bank. Coronado's expedition is said to have crossed it in 1541.

Which industry is the biggest employer in modern Dodge City, Kansas?

Meatpacking dominates the local economy: Cargill and National Beef both run large plants and are the town's two biggest employers.

Which swashbuckling star played a cattle agent turned sheriff in the 1939 Technicolor Western Dodge City?

Errol Flynn worried that audiences would not accept him in a Western, yet the film was a big hit and held its premiere in the real Kansas town.

Which steel magnate paid for the first public library building in Dodge City, now an arts center?

Andrew Carnegie funded the library, which opened in 1907. After the library outgrew it, the building became the Carnegie Center for the Arts, home of the local arts council.

On July 4, 1914, Dodge City hosted the first 300-mile world championship race for which machines?

Motorcycles kept racing at Dodge City into the 1950s, and company founders William Harley and Walter Davidson were among those who came to the first race.

El Capitan, a life-sized bronze sculpture in Dodge City honoring the old trail drives, depicts what?

A longhorn steer in bronze marks the end of the trail for the millions of Texas cattle that were driven north to the town's railhead.

Wagon ruts preserved as a National Historic Landmark west of Dodge City were left by traffic on which route?

The Santa Fe Trail, opened by trader William Becknell in 1821, left two miles of ruts here, the longest clearly defined stretch surviving in Kansas.

The Dodge City Roundup, centerpiece of the ten-day Dodge City Days festival each summer, is what kind of event?

A rodeo, the Dodge City Roundup, anchors the festival alongside a parade, concerts, a beauty pageant and a golf tournament.

Which sheriff based in Dodge City, elected by three votes in 1877, later became a New York sports columnist?

Bat Masterson spent his last years covering boxing for the New York Morning Telegraph and died at his desk in 1921 after writing a final column.

Dodge City earned which regal nickname in its boom years of the 1870s and 1880s?

Queen of the Cowtowns fit after 1876, when Kansas moved its quarantine line west and cut rivals such as Wichita out of the trade.

George M. Hoover opened the very first business in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1872, a bar selling what?

Whiskey came first: Hoover's bar was open for business before the railroad reached town that September, and he later served as mayor.

Rancher Henry Sitler put up the first building on the site of Dodge City in 1871 using which material?

Sod formed the walls of Sitler's three-room house, built to oversee his cattle ranch, and it soon became a regular stop for hunters and traders.

After the bodies were moved from Boot Hill cemetery in Dodge City, what was built on the hilltop?

A schoolhouse went up on Boot Hill as the town worked to shed its violent image, and the graves were shifted to the new Prairie Grove Cemetery.

Amtrak's daily train through Dodge City, Kansas, runs between Chicago and which West Coast city?

Los Angeles is the western end of the line. The train calls at an 1890s Dodge City depot that once had its own Harvey House lunchroom and dining room.

Dodge City hosts a Kansas hall of fame, billed as the first of its kind, honoring which profession?

Teachers get their due downtown, where the hall of fame mounts exhibits on education in Kansas, a quiet contrast to the gunfighter attractions nearby.

Dodge City, Kansas, about 150 miles west of Wichita, sits in which corner of the state?

Southwest Kansas is where Dodge City sits, roughly 150 miles from Wichita, 200 from Amarillo and 300 from Denver.

Quarantine laws pushed the cattle trade west to Dodge City because Texas herds carried which fever-spreading pests?

Ticks riding north on Texas herds spread a fever among local cattle, so farmers lobbied the legislature for quarantine lines that moved steadily west.

Press coverage of the 1883 Dodge City War led newspapers to compare the Kansas town with which Biblical city?

Sodom of the West became a tag for the town as national coverage of the saloon dispute fed the legend of frontier lawlessness.

Luke Short's stake in which saloon, later recreated for television, set off the 1883 Dodge City War?

Long Branch took its name from an owner's hometown in New Jersey, and the original saloon burned down in 1885 and was never rebuilt.

The 1883 Dodge City War, which drew famous gunfighters back to the Kansas town, ended in what way?

Without a shot fired, the standoff ended when the saloons and gambling halls were allowed to reopen, and eight of the men posed for a famous group photograph.

The Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City rebuilds which trackside thoroughfare as it looked in 1876?

Front Street faced the railroad tracks, and in the hide-hunting years great stacks of hides towered along it awaiting shipment east.

Which cattle route, successor to the older Chisholm route, funnelled Texas herds into Dodge City?

Great Western Trail herds first came through in 1874, when John Lytle blazed the route while driving 3,500 head to an Indian agency in Nebraska.

Before Dodge City took over, which Kansas town at the end of the Chisholm route was the first great cattle market?

Abilene boomed from 1867 under cattle dealer Joseph McCoy, then lost the trade as quarantine laws and homesteaders' fences pushed the herds west.

Dodge City sits above which vast underground water supply lying beneath parts of eight Plains states?

The Ogallala Aquifer is one of the world's largest, spreading under about 174,000 square miles from South Dakota down to Texas.

Dodge City was staked out on which line of longitude, long seen as the divide between humid East and dry West?

The 100th meridian crosses the river exactly at Dodge City, and explorer John Wesley Powell noted in the 1870s how sharply rainfall changes across it.

Dodge City is the seat of which Kansas county, named for a Civil War colonel who became a brevet general?

Ford County was established in 1867, five years before the town itself, and its courthouse stands in downtown Dodge City.

Dodge City Community College teams play in the Kansas Jayhawk conference under which nickname?

Conquistadors, or Conqs for short, is the name. The two-year college was founded in 1935 and spent its first 22 years on the third floor of the high school.

The Mueller-Schmidt House, the oldest Dodge City building still on its original site, is built of what?

Limestone from the area went into the 1881 house, which is nicknamed the Home of Stone and kept up by the county historical society.