Dodge City Ford Kansas United States
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With cavalry, steel weapons, and guns he had forced his way through the Apaches, Pueblos, and other nations of the modern southeastern US, but they had no gold.
Coronado's interpreter has repeated rumors (or confirmed Coronado's fantasies) that gold was to be had elsewhere in a location named Quivira.
After more than thirty days journey, Coronado finds a river larger than any he had seen before.
This is the Arkansas, probably a few miles east of present-day Dodge City, Kansas.
The Spaniards and their native allies follow the Arkansas northeast for three days and find Quivirans hunting buffalo.
The natives greet the Spanish with wonderment and fear, but calm down when one of Coronado's guides addresses them in their own language.
A new route, known as the Great Western Cattle Trail, or Western Trail, branches off from the Chisholm Trail to lead cattle into Dodge City, Kansas.
The first settlement of non-indigenous people in the area that would become Dodge City was Fort Mann, built by civilians in 1847 to provide protection for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, but the fort had collapsed in 1848 after an attack by native raiders.
The U.S. Army had arrived in 1850 to provide protection in the region and constructed Fort Atkinson on the old Fort Mann site, but abandoned it in 1853.
Military forces on the Santa Fe Trail had been reestablished farther north and east at Fort Larned in 1859, but the area around the future Dodge City had remained vacant until after the Civil War.
As the Indian Wars in the West began heating up, the army had constructed Fort Dodge (named for Major General Grenvile Dodge) in 1865 to assist Fort Larned in providing protection on the Santa Fe Trail; it will remain in operation until 1882.
The town of Dodge City can trace its origins to 1871, when rancher Henry J. Sitler built a sod house west of Fort Dodge to oversee his cattle operations in the region.
Conveniently located near the Santa Fe Trail and Arkansas River, Sitler's house had quickly become a stopping point for travelers.
With the Santa Fe Railroad rapidly approaching from the east, others had seen the commercial potential of the region.
Settlers had platted out and founded the town of Dodge City in 1872, just five miles (eight kilometers) west of Fort Dodge.
George M. Hoover had established the first bar in a tent to service thirsty soldiers from Fort Dodge.
The railroad had arrived in September to find a town ready and waiting for business.
The early settlers in Dodge City had traded in buffalo bones and hides and provided a civilian community for Fort Dodge, but with the arrival of the railroad, Dodge City soon became involved in the cattle trade.
The first Texas cattle had begun arriving in Baxter Springs in southeastern Kansas by way of the Shawnee Trail in 1866.
As Texas longhorn cattle (among other breeds of cattle) carry a tick that spreads splenic fever, known locally as Texas Fever, alarmed Kansas farmers had persuaded the Kansas State Legislature to establish a quarantine line in central Kansas.
The quarantine had prohibited Texas longhorns from the heavily settled, eastern portion of the state.
With the cattle trade forced west, Texas longhorns had begun moving north along the Chisholm Trail.
Abilene, Kansas, had been the main Cow Town in 1867.
Profits were high, and other towns had quickly joined in the cattle boom: Newton in 1871; Ellsworth in 1872; and Wichita in 1872.
The Kansas State Legislature, responding in 1876 to pressure from farmers settling in central Kansas, once again shifts the quarantine line westward, essentially eliminating Abilene and the other Cow Towns from the cattle trade.
With no place else to go, Dodge City suddenly becomes Queen of the Cow Towns.
Dodge City, formerly a boomtown. becomes a sleepy little town much like other communities in western Kansas by 1886, when the cowboys, saloon keepers, gamblers, and brothel owners have moved west to greener pastures,.
Thousands of cattle once passed annually through Dodge City's stockyards.
The peak years of the cattle trade in Dodge City are from 1883 to 1884, and during this time the town had grown tremendously.
In 1880, Dodge City had gotten a new competitor for the cattle trade from the border town of Caldwell.
For a few years the competition between the towns had been fierce, but there were enough cattle for both towns to prosper.
Nevertheless, it is Dodge City that has become famous, and rightly so, because no town can match Dodge City's reputation as a true frontier settlement of the Old West.
Dodge City had more famous (and infamous) gunfighters working at one time or another than any other town in the West, many of whom had participated in the Dodge City War of 1883.
It also boasted the usual array of saloons, gambling halls, and brothels established to separate a lonely cowboy from his hard-earned cash, including the famous Long Branch Saloon and China Doll brothel.
For a time in 1884, Dodge City even had a bullfighting ring where Mexican bullfighters imported from Mexico would put on a show with specially chosen longhorn bulls.
As more agricultural settlers moved into western Kansas, pressure on the Kansas State Legislature to do something about splenic fever had increased.
Consequently, in 1885 the quarantine line had been extended across the state and the Western Trail had been all but shut down.