Founded in 1872, Dodge City teetered on the edge of civilization.
The Santa Fe Trail and the Arkansas River, along with Fort Dodge, influenced the location of the settlement. According to some, an enterprising merchant stepped off the required distance from the fort's headquarters and, just outside the fort's western boundary, plopped a board across two barrels and opened up a saloon. From that first single business, the town grew in fits and starts.
In a sudden influx that may be mirrored when the new casino and special events center open, the arrival of the rails bringing the trains hit the town in 1875 like a tidal wave. The trains brought people, building materials, and supplies to retail stores. The presence of the train meant hundreds of thousands of cattle would be brought to town to be sold and shipped east. It was more than the three-year-old town could absorb peacefully.
A mere 10 years later, the rail head had moved farther west, and a complication with the health of cattle brought up from Texas brought Dodge City's cattle days to an abrupt end.
There were enough bankers, realtors, merchants, teachers and ministers to continue the process of building and improving the town. Not to mention their wives, who pushed for schools, churches, libraries and hospitals.
Into the first part of the 20th century, committees and interest groups transformed the town from a lawless outpost on the edge of civilization into a respectable commercial center with all the expected amenities, including fine art, great music and upscale cuisine.
Eventually 14 trains stopped in Dodge City daily, and a number of newspapers informed the citizens. Every service demanded of modern living was readily available.
Build us a new station
By 1897, city officials had been lobbying the Santa Fe Railway to build an impressive depot in Dodge City. Their numerous requests were repeatedly met with silence from railroad officials.
Fed up with being ignored, one official finally pressed the railroad for an answer. It turned out that the railroad was unwilling to build a new depot in Dodge City because railroad officials were unsure the town would be able — or willing — to stop the cowboys from riding through the station on their horses with guns blazing.
When the station opened in 1898, it was, in fact, one of the largest stations outside the metropolitan cities of the East, and it was as well-equipped and well-staffed.
A large part of the station was leased to Fred Harvey, a young entrepreneur who started his empire in Topeka and built it all the way to the West Coast. His deal with Santa Fe allowed him to operate a hotel right in the train station at appropriately spaced intervals as the railroad pushed westward. He also provided dining rooms, lunch counters and newsstands in most of the station on the Santa Fe routes.
Next to the hotel lobby was "El Vaquero," Harvey's dining room, which was widely known as the nicest place in town to have dinner. It was expensive and had a strict dress code.
Harvey insisted that a cup of Fred Harvey coffee taste exactly the same, no matter where in the country it was enjoyed. To achieve this, he had the local water analyzed by his food laboratories and a custom blend created for each local kitchen. If the local water was so bad that a perfect cup of coffee couldn't be made from it, water was shipped in by train for coffee brewing.
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Founded in 1872, Dodge City teetered on the edge of civilization.
The Santa Fe Trail and the Arkansas River, along with Fort Dodge, influenced the location of the settlement. According to some, an enterprising merchant stepped off the required distance from the fort's headquarters and, just outside the fort's western boundary, plopped a board across two barrels and opened up a saloon. From that first single business, the town grew in fits and starts.
In a sudden influx that may be mirrored when the new casino and special events center open, the arrival of the rails bringing the trains hit the town in 1875 like a tidal wave. The trains brought people, building materials, and supplies to retail stores. The presence of the train meant hundreds of thousands of cattle would be brought to town to be sold and shipped east. It was more than the three-year-old town could absorb peacefully.
A mere 10 years later, the rail head had moved farther west, and a complication with the health of cattle brought up from Texas brought Dodge City's cattle days to an abrupt end.
There were enough bankers, realtors, merchants, teachers and ministers to continue the process of building and improving the town. Not to mention their wives, who pushed for schools, churches, libraries and hospitals.
Into the first part of the 20th century, committees and interest groups transformed the town from a lawless outpost on the edge of civilization into a respectable commercial center with all the expected amenities, including fine art, great music and upscale cuisine.
Eventually 14 trains stopped in Dodge City daily, and a number of newspapers informed the citizens. Every service demanded of modern living was readily available.
Build us a new station
By 1897, city officials had been lobbying the Santa Fe Railway to build an impressive depot in Dodge City. Their numerous requests were repeatedly met with silence from railroad officials.
Fed up with being ignored, one official finally pressed the railroad for an answer. It turned out that the railroad was unwilling to build a new depot in Dodge City because railroad officials were unsure the town would be able — or willing — to stop the cowboys from riding through the station on their horses with guns blazing.
When the station opened in 1898, it was, in fact, one of the largest stations outside the metropolitan cities of the East, and it was as well-equipped and well-staffed.
A large part of the station was leased to Fred Harvey, a young entrepreneur who started his empire in Topeka and built it all the way to the West Coast. His deal with Santa Fe allowed him to operate a hotel right in the train station at appropriately spaced intervals as the railroad pushed westward. He also provided dining rooms, lunch counters and newsstands in most of the station on the Santa Fe routes.
Next to the hotel lobby was "El Vaquero," Harvey's dining room, which was widely known as the nicest place in town to have dinner. It was expensive and had a strict dress code.
Harvey insisted that a cup of Fred Harvey coffee taste exactly the same, no matter where in the country it was enjoyed. To achieve this, he had the local water analyzed by his food laboratories and a custom blend created for each local kitchen. If the local water was so bad that a perfect cup of coffee couldn't be made from it, water was shipped in by train for coffee brewing.
The depot evolves
The Harvey restaurant continued in operation until 1948. By then, the war was over, and families were traveling by car more than by train. Harvey gradually closed operations all along the routes as business declined.
Santa Fe kept division offices operating out of the station until 1993, when the station was abandoned except for the Amtrak waiting room on the west end.
In 2000, the entire station was closed for renovation, reopening in 2004.
Today, the depot is home to the Depot Theater Company, a community theater which produces dinner theater in the east end of the building — an area added in the 1920s to support Fred Harvey's Pullman dining and sleeping car operations.
The Depot Theater Company produces five dinner theater productions each year, along with additional cabarets and shows from time to time.
For more information about the Depot Theater Company, call (620) 225-1001.
Culture on the great plains
In February 1907, another important building opened its doors in downtown Dodge City.
As the cattle era ended in 1885, the county superintendent of education's office set up a lending library. Having outgrown that library by 1905, the library board was investigating every funding source it could find. The board wrote to Andrew Carnegie, who was beginning to fund construction of libraries in small towns.
As reported in the Dodge City Globe Republican:
"It has been a long time since the ladies of Dodge City began the work of securing a public library... They met discouraging views when they approached the men on the question, but they managed the undertaking ... When the word was given out that 'they were going to have a library, whether any help was given them or not,' the men realized the library was practically a settled fact, and they gracefully turned about and lent their assistance."
The structure, located at Second and Spruce, served as the public library until December 1969. There followed several years of failed attempts to make the building work as a disco or a train-themed family restaurant. In the early 1980s, local citizens put together a fundraising campaign to purchase the building and renovate it as an arts center.
The Carnegie Center for the Arts is open from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The facility runs a full schedule of exhibits and receptions.
For more information about the Carnegie, call (620) 225-6388.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The fifth in our five-part series will feature Dodge City's attractions which are not focused on Western heritage and visitor services.
Reach Don Steele at (620) 408-9910 or e-mail him at don.steele@
dodgeglobe.com.
