Wild West Podcast
Welcome to the Wild West podcast, where fact and legend merge. We present the true accounts of individuals who settled in towns 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 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 as we take you back in history to the legends of the Wild West. You can support our show by subscribing to Exclusive access to premium content at Wild West Podcast + https://www.buzzsprout.com/64094/subscribe
Wild West Podcast
Time Travel and Treasures in Kansas: Lynn Johnson's Intriguing Journey through the Boot Hill Museum and Dodge City's Rich History
We're taking you on a time-traveling expedition to the heart of Kansas history with our special guest, Lynn Johnson, Director of the Boot Hill Museum. Lynn not only takes us through the riveting development of the museum, from its inception by the Dodge City J.C.s in 1947 to its ongoing expansion but also immerses us in the rich tapestry of Dodge City's past. The museum's story is as intriguing as the exhibits it houses. From a buffalo hunt exhibit to a push-button reenactment of historical figures and even recreating the 1877 cattle drive environment, the museum spares no detail in bringing the city's history back to life.
Ready to plan your visit? Lynn gives you all the essential details - the opening hours, ticket prices, and the all-inclusive Marshall Pass. Discounts for families and active-duty military personnel also await! To stay in the loop with all the museum's happenings, join their Facebook page and visit their website. The Boot Hill Museum isn't just about history; it's about experiencing it. Get ready for a journey that takes you thousands of years back in time, right from the founding of Dodge City to the present!
To receive additional information on Boot Hill Museum, you can join the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/BootHillMuseum. In addition, you can learn more about your upcoming visit to Boot Hill Museum at www.boothill.org. Links to these Websites are provided in the description portion of this Podcast.
The exciting and unique story of early Dodge City is told daily along Front Street at Butte Hill Museum. The area's rich history dates back to the Native Americans, who thrived off the land and the buffalo. The establishment of the Santa Fe Trail brought settlers to the area and introduced the potential of what is known as Dodge City. Law and Order was soon recognized and Dodge City became a civilized frontier town and a center of commerce on the prairie. Wild West Podcast proudly presents the history of Butte Hill Museum. At the end of this episode we will have Lynn Johnson, assistant director of Butte Hill Museum, to talk about the progress the museum has made over the years.
Speaker 1:Butte Hill Museum Inc. Is a private non-profit organization founded by the Dodge City JCs as a community service project in 1947. In March 1947, merritt Beeson, son of Chocolate Beeson, who owned the Longbranch Saloon, broke ground on the original Butte Hill Cemetery site in a ceremony to honor the creation of a museum to tell of Dodge City's exhilarating past. The Dodge City JCs, the junior chamber of commerce, also wanted to establish the museum as a community service project. As a result, a 3,000-square-foot rustic western building was constructed. The western building, staffed by volunteers, contained various cultural and natural history objects. In the mid-1950s, dodge City bid to become the home of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. It had all but been decided to bring it here when, at the last minute, oklahoma City won out, the Cowboy Capital down but not defeated took the money raised to build the Hall of Fame and joined with the JCs to make Butte Hill Museum bigger and better. In 1958, the first section of the Front Street replica was constructed and included the Longbranch Saloon Soon. People from all over the world began traveling to Dodge City to get a taste of the Queen of the Cowtowns. The Longbranch Saloon soon became home to the Longbranch Variety Show, which still performs nightly during the summer months. It is the longest-running variety show in the nation. The recreation of these 1870s period commercial buildings was funded by money raised for the Cowboy Hall of Fame competition. It was at this time the Board of Directors hired a permanent staff to operate the growing complex. Additional buildings were constructed in 1964 to house the collection purchased from the Beeson Museum.
Speaker 1:The Beeson Museum, a privately owned museum, began at the turn of the century. Merritt, beeson and family owned over 30,000 objects of local and regional historical significance. Other additions during later years included added replicas of 1876 period Front Street buildings now consisting of more than one block and several restorations. During the height of the Gunsmoke TV series, over 400,000 people visited Boot Hill Museum in a year. Additional expansions to the museum would take place in 1970 and 1982.
Speaker 1:The restoration projects included the 1930s Santa Fe Railway Depot, complete with a 1903 Santa Fe locomotive, the 1865 Fort Dodge Jail, an 1880 carriage and blacksmith shop and an 1879 cattleman's home. However, exhibits consisted primarily of open storage Collections, care was poor and programs were limited. The Board of Directors in 1979 decided the museum must change directions and become a professional organization operating under accepted standards. Accordingly, the administration hired professional staff and, with the staff's input, developed and put into action a 10-year plan which included applying for a museum assessment program. In addition, the museum assistant program provided a consultant in redesigning all of the exhibit areas, improving collections and documentation, building a visitor's center with an orientation program, consolidating the museum's store into one location, increasing the size of the professional staff and initiating the accreditation of self-study and application with the American Association of Museums. In the 1980s the staff, after research and study, decided on an overall interpretive theme for the complex Planning studies dividing Dodge City history into two major eras the Buffalo Hunting Period of 1872 to 1876, and the Cattle Drive and Wheat Farming Period of 1876 to 1890, were then produced to guide the staff in designing and constructing new interpretive exhibits and educational programs.
Speaker 1:In 2021, the Bute Hill Museum completed its most significant expansion to date, with the addition of a 13,000 square foot building. 12 state-of-the-art interactive exhibits invite guests in to learn the story of Dodge City. Then send them out to front street buildings to live the story. Welcome to Wild West Podcast. My name is Brad Smalley and today I will be your moderator.
Speaker 2:And my name is Mike Ting, the writer and producer of Wild West Podcast.
Speaker 1:Today we have with us Lynn Johnson, Assistant Director of Bute Hill Museum. Lynn, welcome to Wild West Podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Can you provide our audience with some background information on your role as an Assistant Director?
Speaker 3:Well, to be honest with you, sometimes I still pinch myself that what I do is actually a job that I get paid to be surrounded by the stories of Dodge City and the objects that are still around to tell those stories. I have been at the museum for just under nine years and, as with all nine prophets, you wear a lot of different hats, so I do just a little bit of everything there that is needed.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm really excited to have you here, especially with this new expansion project. And how does that layout of the new expansion project provide the visitors with a history of Dodge City, Kansas?
Speaker 3:It really starts you at the beginning with our American Indian exhibit. And so it starts you long before, tens of thousands of years, before white men ever settled this area, and we wanted to really give credit to that culture that they were here for so long, prior to Dodge City ever being founded. And so then it takes you up through the Santa Fe Trail and the exhibit we call Time in Many Flags, where we have the different nationalities and states you know we were once part of Mexico and Spain and France, even Texas up through the founding of Dodge, then lead you out, like you said, on the front street because you've learned the story, and then you get to go live the story.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I thought was pretty amazing is that big freighter wagon that you have sitting in the museum or the expansion part. Can you tell us a little bit about that freighter wagon?
Speaker 3:Sure, we had originally asked our museum fabricators to build us a freight wagon to tell the story of the Santa Fe Trail and of settlement and trade. So when we saw kind of the specs of that and what they were going to build, we were like maybe we should just find a wagon. And there's a gentleman here in Kansas that has built wagons for us. Before he actually located this wagon it had been sitting in a shed for I don't know how many years in Ohio and it's an actual artifact. It's a freight wagon. It was used in the Idaho Wyoming area, was built roughly in the 1860s and so it is the real deal and it's just amazing to me. The back wheel of it I'm five, five and it's well taller than me and the detail on it and the shape that it's in is just amazing.
Speaker 2:One of the attractions, I think in the coolest one, the hunting of the Buffalo. Can you tell us a little bit about that exhibit and why it's so important to Dodge City?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, around the time that Dodge City was founded is really where the Buffalo Hunts were gearing up and we had board soldiers and we had Buffalo hunters wanting to drink a lot of whiskey, as well as the railroad.
Speaker 3:They knew the railroad was coming, so this was June 1872. The railroad actually made it here in August and so, leading up to that, really what drove the need for the railroad to make it out here was the Buffalo Hunts. They even started piling up the Buffalo hides by the stakes where they had surveyed out where the track was going to go. So as you come into our, our Buffalo exhibit, you're greeted with a full stuffed Buffalo and we we basically recreated the exhibit we've had for years up on the people of the Plains building, where you have the herd of Buffalo stampeding and the floor shakes before below you, the rumble, and we even call the exhibit the rumble on the prairie. But we we recreated the video, had it reproduced, to show how significant the buffalo was to our area and what a loss it was whenever the demise of them came as well, and how the Indians depended on them, but also what it did for our economy.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that I thought was pretty impressive is their exhibits of various people, historical figures in Dodge City that really founded Dodge City. It's kind of a push button reenactment. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:Sure, we have these throughout the new exhibits. We have these screens where we had actors portray early characters of Dodge City early. The first one you greet is George Hoover, and with George Hoover you lift the shot glass and he comes onto the screen and it's like you're having a conversation with him. It's so cool. It was so cool to watch those produced and filmed at a studio up in Kansas City. So you get to meet George Hoover and a Harvey girl. You get to meet Dora Hand and hear her story, which is just one of my favorite stories. The last four are my absolute favorites, though, with Mayor Webster Wyatt or Bat Masterson and Chocolate Beeson, and you get to stand there and basically be a part of their conversation among the four of them. It's just amazing. We love how it turned out.
Speaker 2:Well, and of course, the last thing you mentioned earlier is that when you open up the doors to exit the main exhibit, you walk into an environment 1877, when the cattle drives were there. So tell us a little bit about that environment and what it looks like and how you've recreated that 1877 cattle drive era.
Speaker 3:So our Front Street buildings is the focal point of our museum and, you know, for years people didn't really understand that that's where our exhibits were held. They just thought they could go out there and go shopping. But it's pretty awesome and you know, all of us that live around here we really take it for granted, just what we have. So now that we have the new building there, you can walk out onto the patio and the patio is just awesome. There's just no other way to explain it.
Speaker 3:So you have this patio that stretches the whole length of the new building and benches there and you can just sit there and just really take in the Front Street buildings and you do really feel like you're there. You're just so immersed in the experience. There was so many times this summer we would have guests just sitting out there and we would go up to them and say do you need help? Oh no, we're just enjoying ourselves. We're sitting here in the shade and just really enjoying our view. So Well.
Speaker 2:I also like the way that you put together the reenactors and how they visit, accommodate the visitors and they're very helpful. All of your reenactors know the background in Dodge City and the history of Dodge City so it's really helpful to have them as historians on site that they can offer that 1877 experience.
Speaker 1:So, lynn, I agree absolutely with everything that Mike said, especially your comment about the last four. The conversation between those four men it's almost to your, trapped in the middle of an 1880 argument between some pretty historical guys. I really, really enjoy that. But with all of that aside, as far as the new exhibits and everything, let's talk about artifacts a little bit roughly. How many artifacts are in the Boothill Museum collection as a whole, and what are some of your favorites?
Speaker 3:So I ask one of our curators, Kathy Bell, this morning, for those numbers, and so these are the exact numbers that we currently have in our archive catalog. We have a total of 65,697 artifacts. 25,674 of those are objects, so 3D artifacts. We have 18,664 photos and we have 17,582 pieces in our archives. So those are the papers. We have affidavits. We have just about anything you can think of ledgers, things like that. We also have 3,777 books in our library.
Speaker 2:The one of the things is that I know that the museum is constantly and consistently upgrading and bringing new artifacts in. I'm not gonna release this right now, but I will say that there is a unique exhibit coming in pretty soon and it's gonna be exciting to announce that and I'm excited about it. So we'll just leave it at that. It's kind of that mystery of what's coming in the future, but it really is a special exhibit that is coming forward pretty soon at Boot Hill Museum. Why would Boot Hill Museum be on the bucket list for a family vacation?
Speaker 3:I think people are surprised what they're expecting when they get here and then what they get. Some people think that they're only gonna stop for like an hour or so on their way to somewhere, and then when they get here, they realize how long they could actually spend going through the museum itself, let alone in the summertime. You have the gunfights to take in. You have the Old West Photo Parlor you can dress them and get your picture taken. You have the ice cream parlor. Then you have in the evenings you have our show and dinner, which Long Branch Variety show. This next year will be its 65th consecutive season and it runs nightly from Memorial Weekend through mid-August and then weekends through September actually, and so I think people just don't quite take in. I mean, yes, we're a museum, but we're so much more than a museum. The entertainment that we offer, the education that we offer, it really provides something for everybody and it presents the history of Dodge in a way that everybody can enjoy it.
Speaker 1:I always kind of felt that the museum it's not so much a museum in Dodge City as you alluded to. It's much more than that, but the museum is Dodge City in many ways. Do you feel that at least a good portion of the guests that travel through Dodge and experience the museum kind of get that feeling?
Speaker 3:Yes, I think constantly I'll be in the gift shop. I gave a tour to a group here in Dodge not too long ago and at the end they were in the gift shop and one of the ladies brought a guest over, was just so excited for her to talk to me and she says to the lady tell her what you told me. And turns out this lady was on her way home to Florida from California and they had driven out and was driving back and they had stopped at museums all along the way and she was just so excited because Boot Hill Museum was the best one that they had been to, not just on their trip, but even more so. She enjoyed our museum more than even Smithsonian museums that she'd been to in Washington DC and throughout the country. And so when you hear stories like that, it just makes you really appreciate all the hard work that's been done through the years from all of our staff to really create and make Boot Hill Museum what it is today.
Speaker 1:You heard it here, folks Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City is better than the Smithsonian. Come on out and experience that for yourself. Lynn, thank you very much for your time. Mike, do you have anything else?
Speaker 2:Well, I would like for Lynn to mention the fact how much it would cost the opening hours during the summer and then winter hours, fall and spring hours, and just kind of give us a little bit additional information regarding how much time it would take to get a full experience, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Well, the museum has opened 362 days out of the year. We are only closed on Thanksgiving Day, christmas Day, new Year's Day this time of year in the winter we're open Monday through Saturday, nine to five. Sunday, one to five. Memorial day through Labor Day. We are open seven days a week, 8 am to 8 pm, starting on Memorial weekend. We have our gunfights daily at noon and at 6 30. Nightly, from Memorial weekend till about mid August, we have our country style dinner following the gunfight, followed by the Long Branch Variety Show Once all of our actors and dancers and everybody go back to school. We still hold the show on weekends through the month of September.
Speaker 3:To get tickets to the show and dinner you can get it's an all-inclusive experience we offer what we call the Marshall Pass and that gets you admission to the museum, the dinner, the show that includes tip, everything for $48 for adults If you only had time to go through the museum. Admission in the summertime is $18 for adults, $16 for seniors, $12 for children. But we also offer a general admission, family pass. So for the families that have two or more children and you have two adults along, you kind of get a break there for $60 if you have two or more children, it gives you definitely a discount. We're also a Blue Star Museum, so all active duty military and their families get free admission year round.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you very much, lynn, for all those details and again, thank you very much for being here. Part of the show. That's it for now. To receive additional information on Boodhill Museum, you can join the Facebook page at wwwfacebookcomboothillmuseum. In addition, you can learn more about your upcoming visit to Boodhill Museum at wwwboothillorg. Links to these websites are provided in the description portion of this podcast ["Boodhill Museum"] ["Boodhill Museum"]. ["boodhill Museum"].
