For all of the signs announcing the historical trajectory of the Santa Fe Trail along my last two weeks of walking, outside of Council Grove the extant remnants of that past have often been quite minimal. I’m sure part of the responsibility for that is on me; I’m not going to make a multi-mile detour for a modest museum or moderately interesting placard, whereas someone with a car could more easily hunt those down. It’s also, though, a reflection on the transitory nature of this route; for all of the evocative stories associated with it, the Santa Fe was only really in operation for five decades, before it was made irrelevant by the railroad. In time, much of it would fall beneath the plow.
All of that said, the last two days have brought me into two of the most historically rich and best preserved places on the ADT’s walk through Kansas. Leaving Larned on Saturday, I headed due west for seven miles until a small footbridge over the Pawnee Fork river delivered me into Fort Larned. While it’s easy to imagine how intimidating the transcontinental wagon journey would have been in the 19th century, the reality is that most survived it–there was somewhere around a 90% success rate for much of the Santa Fe’s short history.
However, by the 1860s conditions were deteriorating. Whereas the early travelers enjoyed more amicable relations with the Plains tribes, as the decades passed the shine wore off; attacks on wagon trains by the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, and Cheyenne were becoming more frequent. Those tribes had maintained a mobile lifestyle, following the bison herds through the plains, but US government policy pushed them increasingly into reservations. Satanta, a Kiowa chief, said in 1867 that “I don’t want to settle. I love to roam all over the prairies. There I feel free and happy, but when we settle down we grow pale and die.” His wishes would not be observed. In 1868, General Philip Sheridan responded to Indian resistance to reservations with a new strategy, with the goal being to “make the tribes poor by the destruction of their stock, and then settle them on lands allotted to them.”
It was within that context that the US Army established a series of forts along the Santa Fe Trail, including Fort Larned in 1859, each staffed with contingents of soldiers to help protect travelers and merchants. The fort is stunningly well preserved, despite 150 years’ worth of graffiti carved into its stone walls. Many of the room can be visited, each loaded with original furniture and supplies (along with some artistic embellishment, like shelves full of fake loaves of bread). A blacksmith labors over a forge, demoing the kinds of work that would have been done (he gave me a camp trinket).
The most striking story to me from the camp involved the Buffalo Soldiers (which, I wish to inform you, were not just a Bob Marley song). The Buffalo Soldiers were an African American cavalry regiment, created in 1866 after all of the African American units organized during the Civil War were dissolved. They arrived at Fort Larned in April 1867, but were not particularly welcome among the other soldiers. Camp tension spiked in December 1868 when a fight erupted over a pool table. That night, with the Buffalo Soldiers on the outskirts of the settlement, having been ordered to guard a distant wood pile in the midst of a major snow storm, the cavalry stables were burned down. Arson was suspected, but never proved. Nonetheless, the Buffalo Soldiers were moved to a different fort soon after.
Leaving Fort Larned, I turned southward, following a dirt road through quiet fields. Everything in Kansas is broken into square-mile increments, so you can go north-south or east-west, but in general diagonals aren’t possible, aside from some of the highways that go wherever the hell they want. It can make for a frustrating experience, given that the towns I’m moving through are certainly not lined up tidily. So it goes.
The southward trajectory is intentional, though, because it led me towards something I had been hunting for–well preserved wheel ruts left from the wagon trains. I walked four miles south, one mile west, and then half a mile south again, and arrived at a small wooden platform. It was an idyllic spot; not only were the ruts preserved, but so were the original grasses that had lined the prairie, including a striking blue grass. A prairie dog “town” had settled here as well, and my gravest regret from this trip is that I didn’t see a single one poke its head forth from the ground (and I called down into no small number of holes). You could even make out old buffalo “wallows,” where they rolled in the dirt in an attempt to escape the annoyance of biting flies.
I spent a good half-hour on that platform, watching the breeze blow through the grass. And then I remembered that afternoon thunderstorms were in the forecast and I booked it, sprinting through the remaining 18 miles to Kinsley.
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I don’t know if the “severe, damaging thunderstorms” that the weathermen were fussing about ever arrived on Saturday night; if they did, I slept through them. Regardless, I was up at 4:30, with a long day ahead. The walk itself wasn’t interesting–too much Highway 56 and a massive concentration of turbines. But, I had a major destination ahead of me–Dodge City.
Given its outsized role in American popular culture, it’s surprising to see just how short-lived Dodge City’s relevance was. Founded in 1872, already in the Santa Fe Trail’s dying days, it was buoyed by the railroad opening in the same year–and by its establishing a station here. It’s early financial health was tied to buffalo; nearly a million hides were shipped from here in the first three years of the town’s existence. However, before long, the buffalo were gone, and Dodge had to pivot to survive. In their place came longhorn cattle from Texas, driven to Dodge in huge numbers beginning in 1875. Over the next decade, nearly 5,000,000 cattle made the trip. But, by 1886 that, too, would come to an end, and with that Dodge City’s historical prominence.
All of the wealth generated over those 15 years, though, made Dodge a boomtown, drawing to it some of the most colorful personalities of the Wild West and making it the “Wickedest Little City in America.” With 16 saloons to quench the thirst of its 1000 residents, plus plenty of dance halls and brothels, it lived up to the hype.
In lieu of historic authenticity (and hey, fair enough), the Dodge City of the present has opted for kitschy, family-friendly cash grabs. The centerpiece of that is the Boot Hill Museum, which features a variety show and gunfight reenactments. A wax museum is across the street. A modern casino sits on the outskirts of town, along with a golf course and water park. I think I preferred Fort Larned.
On the bright side, though, the Wyatt Earp Hotel, located on Wyatt Earp Boulevard, costs $40 and includes a portrait of Wyatt Earp on the wall.
