Does anyone but me find that combining a museum for teaches and gunfights as odd?
This is in Dodge City, Kansas, next to "Boot Hill", a local ark re-creating
the Dodge City of another era.
Any stop in Dodge City necessitates at stop at the Long Branch.
So we stopped. None of the folks we typically associate with The Long Branch
was there, but they served beer.
As we got west of Wichita the greenery increased.
And Highway US 400 neap Pittsburg, Kansas is a good indicator of
the countryside over which we travelled late in the day.
Day twenty one. All is well. Overnight Pittsburg, Kansas.
" . . . and for three hours the Arkansas River was filled with the buffalo, crossing so fast that they could not stop to drink, they should be overwhelmed by the crowd thronging behind." Matt Hill from On The Santa Fe Trail, a collection of Matt Hill's journal entries from his 1839 trip along the Santa Fe Trail.
Some estimates place the total number of buffalo in North America in 1800 at 70 Million. One herd just south of Dodge City, Kansas was estimated at 4 million. By 1890 there were less than 1,000 buffalo left.
As we traveled today and yesterday, across the great grasslands of plains of Colorado and Kansas it was/is easy to see how this extensive land with the prairie grasses that covered it at that time could support the numbers estimated. For many hundreds of miles, just in these two states alone, there were/are expansive grass lands.
As we traveled further east the amount of cultivation along the route increased, and the brown grasses became less brown, and finally green, and trees began to appear more naturally. Irrigation is still necessary for much of the crop land. Sorghum is a major crop, and more abundant as the greening commenced, to feed the thousands upon thousands of cattle being "feed out" at the hundreds of feed lots across southeastern Colorado and Kansas.
Yesterday and today as we traveled in the open air on the bike, getting all of the smells of the area. The smell of the feedlots was most noticeable. There are thousands of cattle in these numerous lots across southeastern Colorado and much of Kansas. When we opened the door to our motel this morning we were greeted with the smell of pinned cattle and all of their excrement. The smell of cattle feedlots permeated the air, and is stronger in areas where there are larger or numerous feedlots.
Dodge City, Kansas, est. 1865, (pop. 27,340) is a city of legend and lore, made so in part by books, movies, and of course TV. Marshall Matt Dillon, Doc Adams, and Miss Kitty existed only on TV, but Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and other lesser names often attracted national media attention for their exploits, embellished by the writers of dime novels which were popular in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In the later 1800's Dodge City was a frontier town, complete with cowboys with six guns, where the saloons were wide open saloons. It was geographically located to attract a wide range of colorful individuals, and it did.
Wyatt Earp Boulevard is Dodge City's main thoroughfare, running right through the middle of town. Dodge City is a modern small town, with the conveniences expected in a city of its size. It is still a railroad town that traces its growth to the railroad center of its early days and the Santa Fe trail before that.
We are overnight in Pittsburg, Kansas (Pop. 21,000) is the home of Pittsburg State University (Enrollment 7,100 undergraduates, and 1,200 graduate students). Pittsburg, Kansas was named after the Pennsylvania city of the same name, but without the "h" on the end. This is a beautiful town. The downtown area made me think that the population total was higher. The PSU campus is very nice, although ghost town like this early summer day on a late Saturday afternoon.
Our ride today was not as hot as yesterday, with an average of ten degrees cooler. Although it was still hot we managed it much better. The crosswinds were also less today, which allowed for a more comfortable ride.
There was too much to see for the limited time I set aside to be there.
Another good day.
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