Jay B. Baugh, well known Kansas newspaperman, did quite a bit of research on early day newspapers in Dodge City, which he used in an article published in the Dodge City Daily Globe, Tuesday, October 22, 1935, titled, “Bricks, Top Hats, Guns, Figure in Early History of Dodge Journalism.” He has given the author permission to use the article which follows: Christmas day, 1877, was the birthdate of The Globe. (Ford County Globe). It was a lusty youngster, and like all healthy babies it came into the world with a loud voice to take its stand in the southwest, but unlike probably any other youngster ever born, it found it necessary to defend itself almost immediately against criticism of its robust vocabulary. “The gang,” by which gamblers, outlaws and others across the ‘dead-line’ were known, was denounced in the opening issue. The second or third issue of the Globe explained, “We are running a broad gauged paper in a broad gauged country and we cannot contract our expressions to suit narrow gauged communities back east.” And after the first issue’s attack on the gang, the second issue said, “Just as we were going to press some dastardly cur threw a missile through our press room window which broke a lamp hanging over the head of one of our compositors. If the hound who perpetrated this cowardly act will let us know who he is we will give him a clear title to the property of the Globe office and promise him we will never prosecute him for the crime.” Casual items in the paper, selected at random from the files of the first six months show something of the character of Dodge City of the period and of its journalism: “We think there is something rotten with a man’s conscience when he parades the streets with an exposed six-shooter knowing he is violating the law with impunity simply because he is a friend of the marshal or policeman.” |
Newspapers in Ford County 141 “Pistols and coffee for four on Front street last Sunday. No arrests.” “The time has arrived when the howl of the drunken prostitute should no longer be heard in our city.” “Robert Gilmore (Bobby Gill) a noted character of the paste-board fraternity has again returned to Dodge City.” “Josie Halm has gone to the Home for the Friendless at Leavenworth where she intends to improve her time by learning to be a better woman. Success to Josie.” Its territory was the great southwest, probably serving a larger territory than now. Into every cow camp within reach of a post office went the infant Globe. By stage line to Camp Supply in the Indian territory, on to Mobeetie in Texas, the Palo Duro and Las Vegas, up the line to Coolidge, Pueblo, Trinidad, and back east to Atchison, Leavenworth, Topeka, and Lawrence went the paper. F. A. (Frank) Hobble of Dodge City, who as a small boy in 1882, mailed the Globe, after running the hand power press each week, recalls that one issue each week went to London, England. It was a six column paper with our home printed pages, made up largely of cattle brand advertisements and announcements of outfitters for the trail and cow camps. Its home print was inside, and few if any headlines were used. It used the “personal paragraph” idea for any story from a simple murder on a saloon floor to a wholesale massacre by Indians. And its news and editorials were mingled together with complete abandon and neither ever was entirely free of the other. D. M. Frost, who was to remain at the helm of the paper for fifteen years, and W. N. Morphy, whose editorship was short, were the first editors. Both were lawyers. Frost as a young man had come west possibly within the year before he started the paper. He later became Ford County’s representative in the state legislature. He was boomed for senator and judgeships. He was prominent in the Republican party and he took up a “squatter” claim on the military reservation in what is now the second or third block east of the Lora Locke hotel on Military avenue. He was appointed United States landoffice receiver at Garden City under the Harrison administration and left Dodge City for Garden City. Later he disposed of his newspaper interests and he moved to the northwest where he died. |
142 Early Ford County W. N. Morphy was a youngster, just out of law school and a sufferer of tuberculosis. He was found, apparently dying, near a pile of ties along the railroad in the east end of Dodge City in 1877. He was cared for and improved greatly and joined the partnership with Mr. Frost which began the Ford County Globe on that Christmas day in 1877. He was with the paper only a few months, however, when he had to go west for his health. He died in Arizona within a year after leaving here. Legend has it that his name actually was Murphy but that he had changed the spelling of it on coming west, some thought on account of a crime his brother had committed and others thought to partly hide his own identity. Little is known of that however. Not many questions were asked in Dodge City in the ’70’s. The new paper was well on its feet and growing, however, when Mr. Morphy left, and was just beginning its long battle in the Republican party with N. B. Klaine, editor of the Times, who by some irony, two decades later was to become its editor. Mr. Frost was not long alone in his editorship, however, after Mr. Morphy left, when Lloyd Shinn disposed of his interest in the Times to N. B. Klaine and joined the Globe firm, as active editor. He, too, was a victim of tuberculosis which brought his death here at the age of 26 years, but at 26 he had rounded out as busy a life as a man leads in a lifetime now. The southwest was a young man’s country then. There were older men here and they were inactive. Lloyd Shinn had followed his older brothers out from Ohio as a boy, and at the age of eighteen years he was editor of a newspaper in Rice county in Old Atlanta, the first settlement now south of Lyons, Kansas. Then he came on west with his brother, W. C. Shinn, who also was to figure in the Globe‘s history, and became the editor of the Times, then of the Globe, then later he was postmaster in Dodge City and before his death he was probate judge of Ford county all within the space of twenty-six years. His funeral, the largest at that time the young Dodge City ever had seen, was the first in which the rites of the Odd Fellow lodge were used in Dodge City. The lodge here was about four years old at the time of his death in 1882 or 1883. L. A. Lauber, one of the early day printers, came to the Globe in the eighties and Rush Deardoff is a printer who |
Newspapers in Ford County 143 reached here about that time but was not connected with the Globe. He is the oldest veteran printer still in Dodge City and C. P. Markley, now retired, is next oldest, learning his trade as a boy here and later becoming partner in the Globe. A boy named Davis became assistant to D. M. Frost but there is nothing to show that he was a partner, just fifty years ago and was head continuously from Christmas day of 1877 until January 14, 1892, when he announced he had sold his interest in the paper to E. E. Smith. And Smith sold immediately to Mr. Shinn, D. W. Moffitt, and E. H. Madison, and Mr. Shinn held an option to buy the other men’s interest by November 1. Mr. Shinn was in full charge as editor and manager. On that same week the Times came out with new owners, Cline and Hurd having bought out N. B. Klaine who was going back to Missouri. On January 18, Mr. Shinn leased the paper to S. H. Connaway and C. P. Markley, for one year and they established the firm, Connaway and Markley, publishers, with Connaway as editor. In less than six months, however, Mr. Shinn sold the paper to N. B. Klaine, who had not stayed long in his native state of Missouri, and on June 14, 1895, Mr. Klaine announced that he could not stay out of the newspaper business in Dodge City, and he would continue with the Globe-Republican. In the meantime, his old paper, The Times, had suspended publication. At the turn of the century, Mr. Klaine was still the editor and through 1900. The Globe‘s files for 1901 and 1902 are missing, but with the beginning of 1903, it is shown that W. E. Davis was president of the Globe-Republican Printing company and F. W. Tyler was secretary and manager. Mr. Davis, now engaged in the bond and securities business in Topeka and owner of land in Grant county, had traveled for an office supply and paper house through the southwest, before buying an interest in the weekly paper and Mr. Tyler was a newspaper man. Mr. Davis was assistant auditor and state auditor, after selling his ownership in the paper in 1914. October 1, 1910, J. C. Denious, then a young Wichita newspaper man, came to Dodge City and bought the interest of F. W. Tyler, and took active charge of the paper. Later Mr. |
144 Early Ford County Tyler went to Hutchinson to engage in police work. The Globe Republican, under the management of Davis and Denious, continued to December 11, 1911, when it was changed to a daily publication, and called the Dodge City Globe and three years later, Mr. Denious acquired full interest in it. Through 58 years the paper has reflected the progress and promoted the best interests of the southwest area, beginning as a newspaper devoted to chronicling the activities of the cattle ranges and deploring the gambling rackets and the saloon murders of the frontier town and changing its mode of expression as its trends of thought changed with the times, relating in order the coming of schools, churches, and lodges; the advent of the ladies aid society and its softening influence on the cattle town; the coming of the homesteaders which brought about a change in sympathy as between the ranger and the granger; then twenty-five years ago women’s study clubs in town and wheat on the farms; ten years ago the era of motorized farming, and through it all, recording the births and deaths, flattering the virtues and minimizing the weaknesses of three generations. So ended the article by Jay Baugh, all told in true newspaper style so coming generations may know about the newspapers and how they grew with the town. And now an article sent in by Chase Tyler, daughter of Frank Tyler, (veteran newspaper man; who sold his interests in the Globe to J. C. Denious). Dodge City at the turn of the Century as recalled by Helen Chase Tyler: As frontier history recedes (it is unfortunately never preserved as it is enacted) and events of current times pile atop it, early facts grow distorted. The blacks become too indelible, the whites too bleached. Add to this distortion the modern appetite for Western Thrillers, whetted for the apathy of a mechanized age by Cinema and Television and Ford’s county seat, Dodge City, has become a symbol of lawless cowboys, prostitutes, gambling and saloons. We moved to Dodge City from Hutchinson in 1902, when my father, Frank W. Tyler, took over the Dodge City Globe-Republican (now the Dodge City Daily Globe). I was three years old when we arrived and as our residence continued until 1912, the most memory recording and formative years of a |
Newspapers in Ford County 145 child’s life, and as I have never been there since, my recollections of early-day Dodge City remain pristine clear. Gone was the lawless era. Carry Nation’s hatchet had obliterated Kansas saloons and the hard working, God fearing citizens of Dodge City were contented with the dandelion wine their wives brewed and such liquor as could be carried back from Kansas City. In my long residence in the East and my recent removal to the Province of Quebec, Canada, I have always felt an obligation to combat TV and Screen impressions by emphasizing the real cultural tone of the little town as it was at the turn of the century. No people could live on those foot hills of the Rockies, with an unbroken view to the rim of the world; sunrises bursting in pink fire out of the cast and sunsets painting fuchsia tones across a plum-colored western sky, without those people feeling a surge towards beauty. The endless buffalo-sod prairies emanated freedom and the clear air (before erosion brought the dust) pulled the stars so brilliantly close at night that an understanding of God was made simple. Early Dodge City loved music. The once famous Dodge City Cowboy Band had produced sons who, with their associates, formed a town orchestra which practiced every Sunday evening in the L. R. Millers’ big living room. Outside, on the curving veranda, wives and neighbors creaked in tall rocking chairs to the strains of Liszt Hungarian rhapsodies, Strauss waltzes and operatic overtures. Paper-white moonlight blanched their faces and glinted the gossamer wings of humming birds who drank from a Four-o’clock border, while trailing honeysuckle added heady perfume. Inside, where I sat tense with ecstasy, Josephine Groberty, the Miller’s niece (later Mrs. Arthur Scates), who could play at sight any score put before her, would be at the piano. Ralph Miller, as first violinist, conducted the rehearsals. Besides his music ability, Ralph Miller’s other talents made him one of my most admired friends. In a semi-basement work shop, under the kitchen, there was a model locomotive he had made, with every wheel, piston and valve duplicated in miniature. He had the first automobile I remember (a one-seater, with a hand tiller to steer it, which was kept in the barn with the more trustworthy family carriage.) And when that zenith of |
146 Early Ford County modern entertainment made its appearance, Ralph ran the projector for Mrs. Hood’s Nickelodeon. Karl Miller, the late, well known Kansas judge, played cello and Will Miller, now a retired bank president in San Diego, California, played clarinet. My father filled in for second violin or viola, as needed, and Dilworth Baird plucked deep tones and bowed resonantly from a bass viol. The brasses fell to Otie Beeson, trombone, and Merritt Beeson, cornet and others who have faded from my memory. As an oboe was needed, Sam Wilkenson, a druggist, put aside a tuba long enough to master this recalcitrant instrument. Sitting on the back porch, of an early Sunday morning, the piercing squeals emitted from this agonized reed arrested birds in their flight and caused laying hens to cackle. The late Bob Rath, beloved for his jocularity and town interest through his many years as head of the Rath & Bainbridge Drug Company, played flute. The timpani escapes me, but I remember these other faces and their music vividly. Years later, whether it was a symphony at Carnegie Hall or an overture at the Metropolitan Opera, I never heard great music without feeling I was a part of it because “our orchestra,” at Dodge City, had given me for all time a bond with musicians. My earliest recollection of my father was of him bending over scored music paper on the dining room table, lighted by a nickel plated lamp, whistling the piano score, while he set down precise notes, writing out full orchestration for the different instruments available in the orchestra. Nor was Dodge City contented with an orchestra alone. They achieved light operettas and minstrels which delighted the community. I especially remember “The Chimes of Normandy,” a French light opera, which has recently been recorded for long-playing records. Though the record is sung in French, I can recall every English word from that early day production which was given with such success that the cast went to St. John to give an additional performance. Beautiful Eleanor Milton (daughter of the B. F. Miltons, who became Mrs. Ralph Burnette) sang one lead as “Serpolette.” Mrs. Dorothy Gardner, known then as “Dot” (her son Paul, in later years married into an affluent Boston family living in Beverly Hills, Calif.) sang the contralto role of Germaine. No established tenor being available, the community was explored further and |
Newspapers in Ford County 147 a railroad brakeman discovered, who had a natural voice. With arduous coaching by a Mr. Seymour, who gave music lessons there at that time, this fellow carried the male lead with distinction. I believe Arthur Soule was a member of the cast. Sitting in Mr. Gluck’s darkened Opera House, I heard every rehearsal. At an earlier date I also seem to recall Violet Watson insisting, “They call me Buttercup, sweet little Buttercup,” in Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Pinafore.” I remember the year when Ed Madison, a lawyer, was elected as Seventh District Congressional Representative, during the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. Before their departure, friends and neighbors gathered at the Madison home one evening for a fashion preview of the elaborate gowns a Kansas City modiste had made for Mrs. Madison (or “Aunt Lou,” as she was called by her stepdaughter-nieces) to wear in Washington. The best part of the evening for me was Lillian, the second daughter, playing “Glow-worm” and other popular favorites on the upright piano in the parlor. Arthur Soule, who assisted my father on editorial at the Newspaper, married Emily, the elder Madison girl. Known as A. Louis Soule, this fellow later became assistant to the president of the Santa Fe Railroad, dividing his time between offices in Topeka and Chicago. At the Newspaper he sang at his work, his resounding voice enquiring, “Oh tell me pretty maiden are there any more at home like you?” the Flora Dora favorite. Around 1940 my elderly father, then with me in Rochester, N.Y., made the acquaintance of a man in the neighborhood who proved to be of the same family as the Soule who built Soule College, out north of Dodge City (now owned by the Catholic Church) and the “Big Ditch” which was begun some time in the Nineteenth Century with the idea of irrigation being possible for those arid Kansas prairies. It is my recollection that A. Louis Soule was related to this early developer. The only event of our arrival in Dodge City, which made a deep enough impression to last, was my mother sitting in the middle of the bed crying over the house she had left in Hutchinson, after my father brought us from the station to a rented bedroom at the home of Mrs. Baird. It was peeling wallpaper which distressed my mother, but regardless of this minor defect, we had arrived at the dwelling of a family among whose children a daughter, Elsa Baird, reached the New York stage and |
148 Early Ford County of the two well known sons, Spencer Baird became a prominent Denver judge. I remember when the play in which Elsa Baird was starred appeared in Hutchinson and the local group who went down to see it. On their return they praised her dramatic abilities, but there was a whispered suggestion that her mother must have been greatly embarrassed to have had her daughter appear in one act smoking a cigarette. Spencer Baird, then a growing boy, used to read me Starch Books and swing me in a rope swing hung from a tall cottonwood. I got lost coming home from the Presbyterian Sunday School, soon after our arrival, and Dr. O. H. Simpson, pioneer dentist of the day, pulled up to the side of the road in a high-wheeled rig, jumped down and dried my tears and started me off in the right direction. We took our meals at a boarding house on Front Street, and when I grew restive, that first summer, my mother would button on a fresh dress and let me precede her down town and on to the Front Street dining room. This emancipation at the age of three must have been a forerunner of my desire to explore places on my own, which took me to an art school in Chicago in my teens and to New York in later years. Central Avenue was known at “Railroad Avenue,” in that early day and stretched up the hill from the Santa Fe Station, where the Harvey House offered the town’s top cuisine as well as a staff of blooming waitresses to whet jaded appetites. Further down the station platform stood (and continue to stand, I assume) the two towering sun dials which enabled tourists to change their watches from Central Standard to Rocky Mountain time, or reverse them when they were traveling east. So impressive were these sun dials, that my husband, who made his first trip over from England et the age of five, remembers them vividly when he stopped et the Harvey House over night, as trains only ran during the daylight hours at that date. Once at a party in Darien, Conn., the host, a charming Milano born Italian, whose wife inherited one of the old family estates in Darien, showed interest when I remarked that I was a native Kansan. “I used to travel around with my close friend, Fred Harvey, in his private car on the Santa Fe line,” he said. “Did you know Mrs. Hardesty, Fred Harvey’s sister, and her attractive daughter, Sally?” I asked out of my dormant subconscious. He said that he had known them well |
Newspapers in Ford County 149 and often visited them in Dodge City, and with the recollection of their names my memory revived the fragrance of the great lilac hedge which surrounded their large house in the lower part of the town. Board side-walks, shielded by tin awnings, gave Front Street, which faced the railroad tracks, the frontier town look which today’s western picture sets always show. Those wooden store fronts were scarred with bullet holes from early day gun battles, nor can one recall Front Street without remembering Ben Hodges shuffling along. According to legend, Ben Hodges, a half-breed, had been caught stealing cattle end the posse had cut the tendons in his legs so that he could never make another fast get-away. Front Street buildings ran ell the way through to Chestnut, which was the main street in my day. Here, within several blocks, was the business section. Besides the Bee Hive Emporium there was the larger Locke Department Store. I remember pretty, blonde Hattie Locke, in a wide leghorn hat and billowing skirts, as she appeared when she came home from an eastern school. Her brother, Frank Locke, has been a longtime town resident. There was Herbert Brown’s Grocery (he had daughters, Dorothy and Edna) and the larger grocery store of Sam Stubbs, whose seven daughters and two sons made the store a family institution as they assisted at different ages. With the perspective of half a century, I recognize today how typically Cockney English this Stubbs family was, with their love of good horses. A great barn stood behind their large home, over in the Boot hill section, and they maintained a small race track outside of town, on which to work out their race horses. The business section included the Warring Shoe Store, where Gene Warring did his own cobbling; Phil Young’s Jewelry Store, the Rath & Bainbridge Drug Store and a hardware store which was Hanlin’s or Zimmerman’s – probably two stores by both names. Then came that treat of treats-Mark Gwinner’s Confectionary. Here one could not only buy every delectable kind of candy and have sandwiches served in the rear, but the establishment boasted one of Thomas Edison’s new phonographs, with a large assortment of cylinder records to entertain. Mr. and Mrs. Gwinner had the hospitable geniality which today is limited to European Inns and their candy |
150 Early Ford County counter attracted me to the extent that I was continually having to be dosed with Dr. Milton’s calomel. The Gwinner’s son, Donald, was one of my early playmates. In the next block, marked by the bank on the corner, was L. R. Miller’s prosperous Feed Store. It was conveniently located beneath our newspaper, so that I could play in the wheat and corn bins when the editorial atmosphere palled. Town and county ills were cared for by Dr. C. A. Milton and the two doctors, McCarty, father and son. The McCarty Hospital was the first such institution in the town, probably the first in Ford County. Dr. Milton was assisted by a trained nurse, Miss Hollipeter, known and loved by the community as “Hollie.” When a serious illness I developed at age seven had not been recognized as nephritis, and I reached the crisis with convulsions, Dr. Otis Thompson, who had arrived that day after completing his internship, was brought on the run and he and Hollie pulled me through. Dr. Thompson, who took over Dr. Milton’s patients on the latter’s retirement, built a large practice in the community and was later joined by Dr. Pine. Dr. Thompson was the elder son of the beloved, long-time Presbyterian minister in Dodge City. The latter’s interest in animals was so marked that he wrote for a race horse paper and a magazine on goats, between sermons. In 1904 a cook book, as a fund raising project for the Presbyterian Church, was printed by my father, where at the Globe-Republican plant the job printing press was run with a foot tread, and the newspaper press was operated laboriously with a wheel turned by hand. Later a gasoline engine was substituted for motivation, but I remember it breaking down at awkward moments and pandemonium breaking loose on press day. This Presbyterian cook hook was made with signed recipes from all of the prominent women of the town. Unfortunately the copy I have treasured through the years is packed with my books, back in the States, but some member of one of the older Dodge City families must retain a copy, which should be preserved in the town museum as a social “Who’s Who” of that early date. Besides town names already mentioned you will find a recipe by Mrs. Jacoby, famous for her German cooking. The two Jacoby sons married the two younger daughters of Ed Madison, Marguerite and Lillian. Chester Jacoby has been |
Newspapers in Ford County 151 a well known Kansas newspaper man and Carl has made a name for himself as a commercial artist in Chicago. Other names in the cook book include Mrs. Pettijohn, whose daughter, Julia, became the wife of well known Dodge City Globe publisher, Jess Denious; Mrs. Millican and Mrs. Crumbine. The latter’s husband, Dr. Crumbine (later of New York City) banished the public drinking cup and was responsible for many of the sanitation and pure food laws of the nation. Their daughter Violet had a tree seat in their well shaded yard, which I coveted. You will find the name of Mrs. Gingerich, whose husband was an early-day mayor and among their children John, an Annapolis graduate, distinguished himself as Forrestal’s aide during World War II and was a vice president for A. T. & T., in New York, when last I heard of him. He married Vanita Oliphant, whose parents and grandparents, the Paynters, were early Dodge City names. Listed in the Cook Book was the name of Mrs. Fitzgerald and her mother, Mrs. Toppley; Mrs. Evan Bowen, Mrs. Hubbard, Mrs. Aikin, Mrs. J. S. Cady (I believe Mr. Cady was Santa Fe telegrapher) ; Mrs. Churchill, a widow with daughters, Blanche and Beatrice, and Mrs. Herzer. The latter had a young daughter, Katherine, and a small freckled son known, in the Fourth grade, as “Hoodoo.” Hoodoo represented all that I admired in a man in those early Central Avenue Grade School days. Mrs. W. T. Coolidge offers a recipe. I connect Mr. Coolidge with an Abstract office and the family later moved to Topeka. Their five children made up one of those interesting households which so appealed to me, an only child. I went to a Lenten service at the little Episcopal church with the Coolidges, when I was 9 years old, and the hallowed atmosphere of that small edifice atop the hill, with soft light filtering through the tinted windows, to glow on the altar cross, gave me a feeling of spiritual fulfillment to the extent that I turned my back on the Presbyterian church (in spite of my mother’s tearful arguments) and have been a staunch Episcopalian ever since. Mr. Maltis was the rector at that time, he and Mrs. Maltis and their daughters, Mary and Martha, having gone to a diocese in California later. The only member of the Coolidge family I have ever heard of since was the second son, Raymond, said to have been state architect. We lived on Central Avenue, in the block where, on the |
152 Early Ford County corner at the French’s residence was the tall hydrant to fill the sprinkling wagon which watered the dirt streets. On the other side was the Catholic Church pointing a tall steeple to the sky and next to the rectory was the well shaded home of early lawyer “Mike” Sutton. Next door to us the Miltons replaced their early house with the most pretentious residence in the town at that date. This was the Presbyterian and Methodist neighborhood. The Episcopalians lived, for the most part, on the other side of town identified with Boot Hill. It wasn’t until we moved to this other side of the town, where we rented a small house next door to, and owned by Railroad Conductor Bert Jones, that I became a playmate of Helen McCarty and found the delight a sensitive person experiences when they enter a home which has developed the personality and charm of several generations’ gracious living. Helen’s grandmother, Mrs. Kellogg, was not only beautiful, she had the regality of the great lady she was. As I remember, Mr. Kellogg had been president of that first Land Bank which made Dodge City the important hub it became. In their home, with its Victorian cupola, and no additional building to the west to break the view of the sunsets that flamed the horizon, four generations lived in a pleasant harmony which evolved like a book. There was, besides Helen, her pretty mother, who had been “Bess” Kellogg; her busy father, Dr. Claude McCarty; Mrs. Kellogg and her mother, known to the family as “Grandma Whitehair.” Their parlor still held its beautiful carved walnut furniture, with horsehair upholstery, none of that era’s massively ugly oak having been added to mar its artistic elegance. Years later I wrote a magazine editorial on Mrs. Kellogg as symbolizing the attributes of a true lady, which the country could use today so profitably as a pattern. Before I complete these nostalgic recollections, let me mention the Dodge City Embroidery Club, an invitation to which membership marked one as having arrived socially in that western town. I especially remember a meeting held out at the Chalk Beeson dairy farm, when the members’ children were invited. I explored the cow barns with the boys, instead of plying my needle in the parlors like the other little girls and ruined my new shoes, stained my lace ruffled skirts and was severely scolded when I got home. |
Newspapers in Ford County 153 Picnics at Wright’s Park were happy occasions, when we would hunt violets below the towering cottonwoods which thrived along the sandy Arkansas River. I remember Old Soldier Reunions in the park, with tents pitched beneath the trees and Civil War tales told around gleaming camp fires. After Central Avenue passed the built-up portion of the town, it threaded into a single trail which led on to the Stand Pipe. Branching to the east was a deeply rutted road, worn by western trekking prairie schooners. One passed an old cemetery where early markers crumbled from the impact of sand and tumbleweeds. Skirting the horizon was Dr. Milton’s farm and cherry orchard, where the Embroidery Club always had an outing, when the fruit was ripe, for the members to pick their own baskets for canning. Trips west to pick sand hill plums offered another pleasurable excursion. In the early days of the automobile I remember a good will tour made by Dodge City business men, wearing trailing dusters, their eyes shielded by goggles, when they drove the astonishing distance to Garden City, where the sugar beet industry had occasioned a boom. So deeply rutted was the road between the towns, that the several cars making the trip had to travel on the buffalo sod prairie beside this main highway. Gone were the shaggy herds, but Indian arrow heads and buffalo chips still covered the prairies giving proof that Indian and buffalo had lived there not too long ago. |