US Old West History

While the Eastern United States was beginning to experience the Second Industrial Revolution (which started around 1871), the frontier was beginning to fill up. In the early days of the wild west, a great deal of the land was in the public domain, open both to livestock raising as open range and to homesteading.

Throughout much of the Old West, there was little to no local law enforcement, and the military had only concentrated presence at specific locations. Buffalo hunters, railroad workers, drifters and soldiers scrapped and fought, leading to the shootings where men died "with their boots on."

In the cities, business houses, dance halls and saloons catered to the Texas cattle drive trade. The historic Chisholm Trail was used for cattle drives. The trail ran for 800 miles from south Texas to as, and was used from 1867 to 1887 to drive cattle northward to the railhead of the Kansas Pacific Railway, where they were shipped eastward.

Cattle rustling was a sometimes serious offense and was always a hazard for the expeditions. It could result in the rustler's lynching by vigilantes (but most stories of this type are fictional). Mexican rustlers were a major issue during the Civil War (1861-1865), with the Mexican government being accused of supporting the habit. Texans likewise stole cattle from Mexico, swimming them across the Rio Grande.

The Old West comprised the myths, legends and stories, many of them true, that collected around the Western United States from 1865 to 1890.

As a setting for works of fiction, the period quickly became so popular as to define its own genre, the "Western." These works often put forth a romanticized portrayal of the era characterized by isolated outbreaks of violence, but they have also promoted interest in its true history. Historical revisionism has noted that certain interests (notably cowboys, Indians, businessmen, and the United States government) repeatedly clashed in these conflicts, and a few accounts refer to them as a "western civil war of incorporation" that established United States authority over the region.

Dodge City
Fort Dodge, Kansas was established in 1859 and opened in 1865 on the Santa Fe Trail near the present site of Dodge City, Kansas (which was established in June 1872).

The fort offered some protection to wagon trains and the U.S. mail service, and it served as a supply base for troops engaged in the Indian Wars. By the end of 1872, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad crossed Kansas. Dodge City acquired its infamous legacy of lawlessness and gun-slinging and its infamous burial place — Boot Hill Cemetery. It was used until 1878. Dodge City was the buffalo capital until mass slaughter destroyed the huge herds and left the prairie littered with decaying carcasses. Law and order came into Dodge City with such law officers as W. B. 'Bat' Masterson, Ed Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman, H. B. 'Ham' Bell and Charlie Bassett. The city passed an ordinance that guns could not be worn or carried north of the "deadline," which was the railroad tracks. The south side was not as well regulated. Fort Dodge was closed in 1882 and a January 1886 blizzard ended the cattle drives there.

Wild Bill and Calamity Jane
After the Civil War, Wild Bill Hickok became an army scout and a professional gambler. Hickok's killing of Whistler the Peacemaker with a long range rifle shot had influence in preventing the Sioux from uniting to resist the settler incursions into the Black Hills. In 1876, Calamity Jane settled in the area of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills region where she was close friends with Wild Bill Hickok and Charlie Utter, all having traveled in Utter's wagon train. Jane later claimed to have been married to Hickok and that Hickok was the father of her child; however, this story is viewed with skepticism.

On August 2, 1876, while playing poker in Deadwood (then part of the Dakota Territory but on Indian land), Hickok could not find an empty seat in the corner where he always sat in order to protect himself against sneak attacks from behind, and he instead sat with his back to the door; unfortunately, his previous caution proved wise, since he was shot in the back of the head with a double-action .45 caliber revolver by Jack McCall. The motive for the killing is still debated. It is claimed that, at the time of his death, Hickok held a pair of aces and a pair of eights, with all cards black, and a queen of hearts — this has since been called a "dead man's hand".

In 1876, Jane nursed the victims of a smallpox epidemic in the Deadwood area. She married Clinton Burke in 1891 after the couple had been living together several years.

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