Welcome to history as you've never heard it before! Promising tales of lawlessness and bravery, our Wild West Podcast takes you on a riveting journey to the notorious frontier town of Dodge City, Kansas. Founded on hunger for wealth, regulated by gunfighters, and straddling the law, this city was the playground of buffalo hunters and cattle drovers. As citizens grit their teeth and tolerated the violence for the promise of fortunes, law enforcement was encouraged to turn a blind eye to all but the most dangerous of men - until an anti-gang reform group decided enough was enough.
Fasten your seat belts as we unravel a tale of reform, rivalry, and resistance. The Dodge City gang, with members such as Bat Masterson and Mayor Kelly, lost their grip on the city to reformers demanding a safer environment. The tables turn with the arrival of the new mayor, Alonso B Webster, a Civil War veteran who's had his fill of the lawless Dodge City. Listen in to the thrilling chain of events that he sets off, ultimately changing the face of Dodge City forever. The Wild West Podcast is your ticket to the untamed past - raw, authentic, and remarkable. Tune in and let history come alive! To learn more about the legends of Dodge City, go to A Man In A Black Derby Hat.
Welcome to Wild West Podcast, where fact and legend merge. The Wild West Podcast presents the true accounts of individuals who settled in a town built out of hunger for money, regulated by fast guns, who walked on both sides of the law, patrolling, investing in and regulating the brothels, saloons and gambling houses. These are the stories of the men who made the history of the Old West come alive, bringing with them the birth of legends brought to order by a six gun and laid to rest with their boots on. Join us now as we take you back in history to the legends of the Wild West.
Speaker 1:
God City, kansas, founded in 1872, from its very beginnings was a lawless town. Many newspaper accounts during the early days proclaimed the town to be as rough a community as ever flourished under one flag. Some have claimed the reason for the town's recalcitrant reputation is that the majority of the businesses at the whistle stop catered at first to the buffalo hunter and then to the rowdy drovers. The growth of this makeshift community standing at the edge of the flat Arkansas River bottom depended in large part on the trail hands and their immoral conduct. Many of its citizens at the time resented the violence and disorder, but were willing to subject themselves to the unrepressed exploits of these men for the sake of fortunes to be made, the city hired law enforcement officers, were encouraged to overlook all but the most dangerous of men and were directed to keep the violent crimes from getting out of control. From 1872 to 1878, the town was run by the Dodge City gang, who catered to the merchants of the city who feared that if the atmosphere became too strict, the cattle owners and their drovers would take their business elsewhere. This lack of tolerance for violence suddenly changed in 1879, when an anti-gang reform group began to demand a safe, moral environment in which to live and raise families. The so-named reformers were tired of newspapers across the country printing such things as the town of Dodge City is full of prostitutes and every house is a brothel.
Speaker 1:
The reformers were determined to change the situation.
Speaker 1:
Bat Masterson, in the fall of 1879, a member of the Dodge City gang, was defeated in a fiercely contested race for sheriff of Ford County, bat Left Town, but he would be drawn back to Dodge in the defense of his brother, jim. Mayor Kelly, also a prominent member of the Dodge City gang, and the City Council held on until the April 1881 election when they were all defeated. The new mayor, alonso B Webster, a New Yorker who had served in the Union Cavalry during the Civil War and as a dispatch scout at Fort Hayes after the war, opened a dry goods store in Dodge City in 1872. By the time of his election nine years later, webster had enough of the Dodge City gang. His first act as mayor was the firing of Jim Masterson as city marshal, giving the job to Fred Singer, a bartender in one of his saloons. A man in a black derby hat is the story of how Mayor Webster was prompted, on April 17, 1871, to post his warning to the Dodge City gang of no tolerance about the moral ordinances supported by the new anti-licker City Councilman.