More than thirty homicides have occurred in…

Several notable figures of the Old West live in Hays City at points, including George Custer and his wife Elizabeth, Calamity Jane, and Wild Bill Hickok, who had served a brief term as sheriff in 1869.

Hays City had become the county seat of Ellis County in 1870.

By 1872, many of the rougher elements of the populace had left, mainly for Dodge City, and Hays City had become more civilized.

A party from St. Louis, Missouri, led by one William Webb, had selected three sections of land for colonization near Fort Hays in late 1866, anticipating the construction of the Kansas Pacific Railway.

In June 1867, to better serve the railroad, the U.S. Army had relocated Fort Hays to a site near where the railroad was to cross Big Creek, a tributary of the Smoky Hill River.

Seeing a business opportunity, Buffalo Bill Cody and railroad contractor William Rose had founded the settlement of Rome, Kansas near the fort's new location.

Within a month, the population of Rome had grown to over two thousand.

Webb, meanwhile, had established the Big Creek Land Company, then surveyed and platted a town site, which he had named Hays City after the fort, roughly one mile east of Rome.

The railroad had reached Hays City soon thereafter and constructed a depot there.

The railroad's arrival, combined with a cholera epidemic that hit Rome in the late summer of 1867, had driven Rome businesses and residents to relocate to Hays City.

Within a year, Rome had been completely abandoned.

As the western terminus of the railway, Hays City had grown rapidly, serving as the supply point for territories to the west and southwest.