26 minute read
No Fort Dodge, No Dodge City by Anthony Wood
Before the Earp brothers and Big Nose Kate, a fort paved the way for the most famous town in the Old West
THE AUGUST 11, 2022 Dodge City Daily
Globe headline declared, “ThereisnoDodge CitywithoutFortDodge.” The opening line captures the bold sentiment, “How the heck did everyone get here, if not for Fort Dodge?” Apparently that wasn’t important to one Hollywood filmmaker when the first real blockbuster western movie about the raucous cow town was produced.
As the film rolls and the music starts, movie goer anticipation builds. The opening frame announces, “The civil war has ended. Armies disband—the nation turns to the building of the west.” Next a steam locomotive barrels down the tracks at breakneck speed, symbolizing America’s booming industrial strength and fearless belief in Manifest Destiny. A simple caption reads, “Kansas—1866.” A stagecoach races the locomotive but loses, tauntingly declaring to viewers, “Out with the old and in with the new.” After the train arrives in town, rousing speeches are given, and on a whim, the burg is named Dodge City for Colonel Richard I. Dodge, commander of Fort Dodge and charter member of the bustling town.
Directed by Michael Curtiz and filmed in Sol Polito’s fluid Technicolor, Dodge City was one of the highest grossing Warner Brothers movies in 1939. Swashbuckling Errol Flynn and the enchanting Olivia de Haviland starred in the “bangbang, shoot ’em up” style Hollywood movie in an era when film directors took significant historical liberties as they produced reels of entertainment for Saturday afternoon matinees. Watching Dodge City is a great way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon but careful to not spill your popcorn— Dodge City falls short of being considered even loosely written historical fiction. Even so, the film has everything you want in a quintessential American fast paced “good guys versus the bad guys” classic western movie.
Dodge City’s roots began when Henry L. Sitler built a three-room sod home, soon to be frequented by traders and buffalo hunters. Businessmen from Forts Dodge, Leavenworth, and Riley organized the Dodge City Town Company in August 1872, and when they realized their chosen name for the settlement, Buffalo City, was already taken, they renamed the new town Dodge City in August 1872. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad arrived in Dodge City the next month, not in 1866 as the movie Dodge City would lead you to believe.
So before the Earp and Masterson brothers brought the law down on drover’s and outlaw’s heads, before Big Nose Kate plied her prostitute trade and dance hall singer Dora Hand was shot accidently, and before there was a Long Branch Saloon or even a Dodge City, a military outpost named Fort Dodge was built to provide protection for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. Establishment of that U.S. Army post would pave the way for one of the most iconic towns in American western history. So, how does the story of Fort Dodge begin?
THE SANTA FE TRAIL
The history of Fort Dodge, Kansas, begins and ends with the Santa Fe Trail. Though the site of the town of Santa Fe was to some extent inhabited in 1607, the conquistador Don Pedro de Peralta made the location a permanent settlement sometime in 1609-10. When Mexico gained its independence in 1821, the Spanish empire’s closed border policy ended, and the oldest European community west of the Mississippi River became the new capital of the recently formed province of New Mexico. With that, commercial trade opened between the United States and Mexico.
In the fall of that same year, William Becknell led a twenty-one man packtrain of goods from Franklin, Missouri, to open the 1,000 mile Santa Fe Trail. Before Becknell and thousands of other traders thereafter began supplying the isolated New Mexicans with coveted cloth, iron tools, and other manufactured goods in return for gold, silver, furs, livestock, and wool, Native Americans had long used trails that became portions of the route. Once Becknell and other traders established this link between the United States and the Province of New Mexico, Mexican merchants heartily joined in the commercial expansion. Until 1846, goods were traded, bought, and sold on the two-way economic highway used by both countries.
That same year, U.S. Brigadier General Stephen Kearney raised the stars and stripes over the Santa Fe Plaza during the Mexican-American War. When Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war in 1848, New Mexico and California were ceded to the United States. Commercial and military freight business boomed to unheard of new heights. The Santa Fe Trail became a federal road connecting the United States and the new southwest territories used by settlers moving west, stagecoach lines, California gold seekers, trappers, adventurers, missionaries, and New Mexicans traveling east. Except for a brief moment when Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley flew the Confederate flag over the city of Santa Fe, the U.S. enjoyed a permanent and safe route west. That is, until the Plains Native Americans decided Anglo-Americans were becoming too greedy for their long-established territorial lands.
THE WAY WEST
As settlers and merchants flooded the western plains in their wagons, routes shifted depending upon the weather. One such path developed not quite seventy miles west of the famous sandstone landmark Pawnee Rock, the halfway point on the Santa Fe Trail. The towering edifice was once used by the Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, and Cheyenne Indians to spot buffalo herds, fight pitched battles, which included Kit Carson on one occasion, and hold councils of war and peace. Soon many travelers heading west stopped there to rest and carved their names in the natural landmark. One Santa Fe Trail traveler recorded, “Pawnee Rock springs like a huge wart from the carpeted green of the prairie.” As much as settlers and traders moving west enjoyed the stop, Pawnee Indians took advantage of the location to ambush unsuspecting wagon caravans.
Freighters, settlers, soldiers, and travelers trailed southwestwardly alongside the north bank of the Arkansas River to Pawnee Rock where they found the trail divided into the Wet Route and the Dry Route. Both courses snaked along the Arkansas River, and depending upon the weather, migrants could choose the best route. Some believed the Dry Route was shorter, when in truth travelers could simply make better time on paths that were virtually the same distance. At a campground that developed just west of the divide, the site for Fort Dodge would later be chosen.
MILITARY PRESENCE INCREASES
With travel and commerce on the Santa Fe Trail expanding, various Indian tribes took the opportunity to trade but also plunder. It was only a matter of time when a heated conflict would arise. After three traders were murdered in 1828, fellow merchants requested a military presence be provided by the United States. With limited resources and unable to work together for a mutual protection pact with Mexico, U.S. military efforts to keep travelers safe on the route were inadequate at best. Native Americans continued to harass travelers.
When war broke out between Mexico and the United States, the route was used for conquest, and Fort Mann became the first military post on the Santa Fe Trail in 1846. Just west of the later site of Fort Dodge, Fort Mann primarily offered protection against hostile Indians. Barely able to defend itself, it was abandoned in 1847. Except for a special company of Missouri volunteers under the command of Major William Gilpin, nicknamed the “Indian Battalion,” that reoccupied Fort Mann until their term of service expired in 1848, no real military protection was available in the vicinity.
Once regular stagecoach service began in 1849 though, that all changed. New military forts were founded to protect the travelers—Fort Atkinson and Fort Union (1851), Fort Larned (1859), Fort Wise,which became Fort Lyon (1860), Fort Zarah (1864), Camp Nichols and Fort Aubrey (1865), and Fort Dodge also that same year. All were established as safe havens and repair stations strategically located in hostile Indian territory.
HOSTILITIES INCREASE
Despite the influx of westward moving merchants, soldiers, miners, ranchers, farmers, town builders, preachers, lawyers, newspapermen, saloon proprietors, gamblers, prostitutes, and outlaws encroaching on the Plains tribes, the outnumbered and technologically inferior Native Americans refused to go quietly into the night. They fought back.
Although the buffalo-horse culture was a recent development in the history of the Plains Tribes, they had perfected hunting on horseback as well as a hit and run decoy-ambush style of warfare that included raiding and horse stealing. They were acclaimed to have been some of the finest horsemen in the world.
With the Santa Fe Trail running through their hunting grounds, small bands would target lesser protected wagon trains with little possibility of being brought to military justice. They simply melted back into the prairie once their deeds were done. Comanche, Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Kiowa warriors resisted the intrusion on their lands with a vengeance of biblical proportions. For this reason, Fort Dodge was founded along with the other posts—to counter and eventually end the hostile Indian threat.
Relations between Native Americans and Anglo-Americans deteriorated rapidly as the Civil War heated up. Resistance became intensely violent in 1864 with raids that included 175 cattle being stolen from a government livestock contractor in the Colorado Territory. The Colorado territorial government sent Lieutenants George S. Eayre and Clark Dunn to punish the wrongdoers. The troopers wrongly attacked an innocent Cheyenne camp, and soon after, Lieutenant Eayre similarly attacked another Cheyenne village near where Fort Dodge would soon be located.
With no justifiable reason for the attack, Cheyenne warriors retaliated. They, and other tribes, were driven to become marauders who indiscriminately raided and preyed upon less than prepared settlers and merchants. Soon all travel along the Santa Fe Trail stopped. The troops could neither locate nor punish the tribesmen. They searched but simply could not find them. Those troops were withdrawn in the fall of 1864 to meet General Sterling Price’s Confederate attempt to capture Kansas City and Fort Leavenworth, which made easier targets of those traveling the Santa Fe Trail.
Obviously, the U.S. Army made several blunders that inflamed relations between the tribes and Americans, but lessons were not learned. Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle and other chiefs who sued for peace were sent into camp near Fort Lyon to await talks. There at Sand Creek, on November 29, 1864, Colonel John M. Chivington, commanding the 3rd Colorado Cavalry, slaughtered and mutilated Cheyenne men, women, and children, despite the Indians raising a white flag. Tensions flared even more when Brigadier General Kit Carson similarly captured and razed a Kiowa village at Adobe Walls on the Canadian River just four days previous to the Sand Creek Massacre.
THE FOUNDING OF FORT DODGE
In December 1864, famed Union Major General Grenville M. Dodge was assigned the task of reorganizing the Department of Missouri, which encompassed the state of Kansas and the Colorado, Nebraska, and Utah Territories. Lamenting over the fact that nearly two hundred settlers and travelers had been murdered in Kansas that year alone, and with more violence expected, General Dodge recommended that a number of new military posts be built along the Santa Fe Trail for support and protection. He also quickly revoked the licenses of several Indian traders who were supplying hostile Indians with modern weapons and ammunition. Besides Camp Nichols and Fort Aubrey, Fort Dodge was added to protect use of the Santa Fe Trail and the surrounding area.
Increased military presence helped, but little was accomplished to quell the persistent threat. A new peace initiative was offered in October 1865 by the federal government. A few tribal leaders accepted the terms and moved to reservations south of the Arkansas River, but more so than not, many chiefs vowed to stop westward migration and protect their ancestral lands, whatever the cost. With more settlements being established, the building of the railroad, and the slaughtering of the great herds of buffalo, the handwriting was on the wall for the demise of the Plains Native American horse culture that occurred less than two decades away. Fort Dodge became a part of that destruction.
The founding of Fort Dodge experienced a frigid beginning. On October 23, 1865, famed Civil War General Grenville M. Dodge sent a written proposal to Colonel James H. Ford, commander of the District of the Upper Arkansas, with orders to establish a new post west of Fort Larned on the Santa Fe Trail. With Henry Bradley as guide, Colonel Ford and a small detachment of soldiers left Fort Larned on October 28th to locate a site suitable for the new military post. Blizzard-like conditions sent them back to Fort Larned the next day. Two days later, Colonel Ford sent two companies of the 11th Kansas Cavalry, commanded by Captain Henry Pierce, to select a site near old Fort Atkinson and christen the new post Fort Wagoner. Ford rescinded that order. A location several miles east of the abandoned fort was selected and named Fort Dodge after General Greenville M. Dodge.
Fort Dodge was strategically situated between Forts Larned and Lyon to deal with hostile Native Americans near the start of the Wet and Dry Routes and where the Santa Fe Trail crossed the Arkansas River. The garrison would soon offer escorts to protect stagecoaches and wagon trains on the Cimarron Route as well. Fort Dodge was officially established on April 10, 1865, when Captain Pierce, along with companies of the 11th cavalry and 2nd U.S. Volunteer Infantry, pitched tents and excavated dugouts in a twelve foot high clay bank along the Arkansas River until permanent quarters could be built. The seventy or so dugouts that could accommodate three to five men certainly served troops better than tents, which offered little shield against cold prairie winds. The floors were damp and susceptible to periodic flooding. The officers were quartered in three one room sod cabins roughly fourteen by twenty feet. Other buildings constructed of sod included a kitchen, quartermaster’s warehouse and commissary, and a hospital. During the winter of 1865-1866, dugouts were also hewn from riverbank earth to stable trooper’s horses.
That winter plagued the post with severe blizzards, piercing winds, and freezing temperatures. With little wood for fires or coverings for the dugout entryways and poor weather shutting down trail traffic, the troops were isolated and remained huddled in their meager quarters. General Dodge joked that the fort was named after him because of the suffering the soldiers experienced that trying winter.
Early on, soldiers built structures from sod, such as a livery stable and barracks. But rains and the sheer weight of the materials caused walls to bulge and collapse. Finally, with lumber made available and a stone quarry located five miles away, masons and a large contingent of laborers were hired to construct permanent structures. When construction finally was complete, the post boasted three company barracks for enlisted men, a commanding officer’s quarters, hospital, quartermaster and commissary storehouses, kitchens, a bakery, bath houses where the men could wash, latrines, and stables to round out the picture. A post trader’s store and saloon was built by a private owner sometime after 1866. Leo E. Oliva offers a detailed description of the post in his excellent volume, Fort Dodge: Sentry of the Western Plains.
Fort Dodge was constructed in the shape of a half circle on the north bank of the Arkansas River to bring peace to the Plains and protect growing interests in the area along the Santa Fe Trail. One large boulder blocked the path west though—Indians. Troops at Fort Dodge attended to a multitude of tasks besides keeping the tribes south of the Arkansas River—constructing post buildings, protecting commerce, stage stations, and settlements, as well as guarding the mails, escorting stagecoaches and wagon trains, and the construction of the railroads. They made war only when it became absolutely necessary to enforce treaties made with the tribes. Troopers regularly scouted and patrolled with strict orders given not to pursue Indians across the Arkansas River. (For interested researchers—reports, journals, and memorandums by officers in charge, scouts, and soldiers recounting scouting patrols, marches, and expeditions from Fort Dodge for years 1873-1879 are available through the Kansas Historical Society: https://www.kshs.org/archives/220090)
All the while, the Plains tribesmen made the soldier’s job difficult with their “hit and run” tactics. This made punishing perpetrators and recovering stolen property and captured persons nearly impossible as raiders simply disappeared into the prairie with their plunder.
In June 1865, several Indians disguised as soldiers brazenly attacked Fort Dodge and stole a herd of livestock. They returned four days later to steal the rest, killing two sutler store employees. In September, five Mexican men were murdered by Kiowa raiders not far from Fort Dodge. General Dodge planned to launch a major campaign against the hostiles in 1865 with Fort Dodge to be used as a supply base for the expedition. The effort was cancelled before it began.
UNSETTLING TIMES: MEDICINE LODGE TREATY OF 1867
A peace faction arose within the federal government mainly due to the Civil War ending and the blunder of the Sand Creek Massacre. The few chiefs who agreed to the terms made in the October 1865 peace treaty visited Fort Dodge and other posts to receive allotments of food rations and additional annuities. But this only brought them closer to the Santa Fe Trail and tempting opportunities to raid. And raid they did.
On February 21, 1866, four Cheyenne warriors wearing military hats and coats approached a wagon train led by Henderson Boggs. Though treated hospitably with gifts of food and tobacco, they stole three horses and murdered and scalped Bogg’s sixteen year old son. Agent Edward Wanshear Wynkoop investigated the tragedy and reported that “Mr. Boggs went to the Indian camp without any authority... and whilst there traded an Indian Eleven One Dollar Bills for Eleven Ten Dollar Bills. The Indian found him out, came over for revenge, and unfortunately killed his son. I think this case needs no further comment.” Though Wynkoop ruled in the Cheyenne’s favor, it did little to ease growing tensions. The rest of 1866 remained peaceful, but military leaders believed it was simply a matter of time for a break in the peace to happen.
One great achievement attributed to Fort Dodge was the recovery of several members of the James Box family who had been captured by Kiowa raiders. The Kiowa finally agreed to free their captives in return for guns, powder, knives, tobacco, and a list of other items. Fort Dodge commander, Captain Andrew Sheridan , brought Box’s daughters, Margaret and Josephine , safely back to the post. Sheridan hoped the tribes who held remaining Box prisoners would follow suit. Not long after, it was reported that Margaret birthed a child sired by one of the Kiowa tribesmen, adding to the tension.
Meanwhile, General William T. Sherman, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, changed the rules of the game. Visiting Fort Dodge October 6-8, 1866, he instructed General Philip Sheridan that there would be no more trading of goods for captives because it served only to encourage the Indians to seize more hostages. In a ruse, Sheridan lured a band of Kiowa Apache chiefs into the post and held them hostage until the rest of the Box family could be returned. It worked.
Despite this minor victory, military leaders, railroad corporations, and public officials believed the peace negotiations had failed. The press used the story of the Box family to stir public support for a first strike plan to deal with hostile Indians. Wynkoop did his best to get the Plainsmen to stand down, but a new commander did little to help bring peace through treaty agreements. General Winfield Scott Hancock, famed Union leader at the Battle of Gettysburg and new commander of the Department of the Missouri in 1867, did not trust the Indians. His chosen strategy was use of force to deal with the “Indian problem,” causing more tension between the Plains tribes and the growing white population.
Yet, Hancock, along with General Sherman, determined reports of Indian hostilities to be exaggerated and that the call for an increased military presence served only the efforts of businessmen to make greater profit. Their suspicions were confirmed when it was learned that newspapers printed false reports of Indian attacks. Newspaper correspondent Henry M. Stanley, who later became famous for finding David Livingston in Africa, further confirmed Sherman’s suspicions that men like Kansas Governor Samuel J. Crawford fomented fear through false reports of an imminent general uprising. Meanwhile, traders like Charley Rath illegally sold whiskey to the Indians, and it was reported that he “armed several bands of Kiowas with revolvers and has completely overstocked them with powder.” Bureau of Indian Affairs licensed traders enabled the hostiles to stockpile many carbines, revolvers, powder, and lead which helped matters not at all. The situation became chaotic and the truth was elusive.
In February 1867, General Hancock learned the Kiowa Chief Satanta did not want war but in the same breath demanded that all military posts be closed, including Fort Dodge, the soldiers withdrawn, Santa Fe Trail traffic to end, and the railroad to halt all before the grass turned green.
Convinced that an uprising was imminent in the spring of 1867, General Hancock led an expedition on March 26th to intimidate the Indians with a massive show of force with a number of scouts, including famed pistoleer, James B. (Wild Bill) Hickock. Little was accomplished, save Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer’s burning of an abandoned village, which further enflamed hostilities. Agent Wynkoop protested Hancock’s heavy handed ways. Hancock relented, ordering his command, “friendly Indians must not be molested.”
After a series of talks between General Hancock and Arapaho Chief Little Raven and Kiowa Chief Satanta at Fort Dodge, a relative peace was agreed upon. Agent Leavenworth criticized what became known as “Hancock’s War,” saying, “little good, but a great deal of harm, has resulted from this expedition.” Boots on the ground agents like Leavenworth warned this would not be the last of hostilities.
Indian raids continued in close proximity of Fort Dodge with a number of attacks made upon Mexican teamsters and wagon trains in which they plundered goods, stole livestock, and shot and killed a young Mexican boy with an arrow. Public opinion of the army waned, as an editor declared in the June 29, 1867, issue of the Junction City Union, “There does not appear to be enough soldiers to protect the Santa Fe Route, let alone hunt Indians… men are being butchered every day, and no attempt is made to bring the war to a close.”
Hancock discontinued his war. He improved trail defenses and increased troop numbers, though it did little to solve the “Indian problem.” Advocates pushed Congress to create the Indian Peace Commission, and several chiefs among more than five thousand Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribesmen agreed to the terms of the Medicine Lodge Treaty signed in October 1867—an agreement the U.S. government would soon not honor.
In the October 17, 2017, issue of Smithsonian Magazine, Lorraine Boissoneault correctly states, “…representatives of the United States never seemed to understand the political structure of tribes they negotiated with.... Although the document was ratified by Congress in 1868, it [the treaty] was never ratified by adult males of the participating tribes—and it wasn’t long before Congress was looking for ways to break the treaty.” This ensured that hostilities would return at winter’s end, which they did.
Many tribes stationed themselves near Forts Dodge and Larned to receive their promised government allotments, but with supplies limited due to bureaucracy, the nearly nine thousand Native Americans lay destitute. To make matters worse, white hunters violated treaty rules and crossed into reservation lands without authorization. With whites unwilling to keep treaty terms, the Indians felt free to violate treaty terms as well. General Philip H. Sheridan, who replaced Hancock, refused to meet to hear the Indian’s plea for help. Chief Satanta of the Kiowas, after returning to Fort Dodge in February 1868, felt justified to attack, murder, and plunder in retaliation.
Reports flooded in from all over of men, women, and children being murdered, women being raped, homes burned, and large numbers of livestock and other property stolen. On August 24, 1868, Kansas Governor Samuel J. Crawford went above Sheridan’s head to personally seek help from President Andrew Johnson on the same day the General declared war on the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes. Fort Dodge served as the staging point for an offensive operation to begin September 1st.
As Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Sully, commander of Fort Dodge, prepared to take the field, Indians attacked a Mexican wagon train at Cimarron Crossing, murdering and mutilating fifteen men and women. The next day, four Fort Dodge troopers, while on a wood gathering detail, were attacked but rescued by fellow soldiers. This happened as General Sheridan met with Arapaho chiefs who declared they had nothing to do with the recent raids.
The following day, September 3rd, Comanche and Kiowa warriors fiercely attacked Fort Dodge with General Sheridan still present. Four soldiers were killed with seventeen wounded, but Indian casualties remain unknown. Cheyenne warriors attacked another Mexican wagon train near Fort Dodge that same day, murdering and scalping sixteen teamsters.
Finally getting underway on September 7th, Sully’s expedition amounted to little except to get several scouts and the unit’s surgeon killed in the Battle of Beecher Island. On September 15th, the Indians nearly ambushed the troops, and both sides experienced casualties. Sully retreated to Fort Dodge, claiming he was running low on supplies. The truth was he feared another attack.
Finally getting underway on September 7th, Sully’s expedition amounted to little except to get several scouts and the unit’s surgeon killed in the Battle of Beecher Island. On September 15th, the Indians nearly ambushed the troops, and both sides experienced casualties. Sully retreated to Fort Dodge, claiming he was running low on supplies. The truth was he feared another attack.
Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer replacedSully at Fort Dodge to start a winter campaign, being advised that casualties during Sully’s effort, white and Native American, were about the same. In the meantime, raids on Fort Dodge continued, including the murder and scalping of local citizen, Ralph Morrison, who made the mistake of hunting alone just a mile from the post. Tensions came to a head when Custer attacked Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle’s village in the Battle of the Washita, November 27, 1868. Custer had 36 casualties, but he burned the village, killed 800 horses, and took fifty-six prisoners.
Fort Dodge served as a major supply depot in support of the winter campaign which ended Spring 1869, with General Custer camping a night at Fort Dodge as he passed through April 2nd. The winter campaign successfully decreased Indian attacks along the Santa Fe Trail. Except for a few hiccups, by 1870, western Kansas no longer suffered the “Indian Problem.”
Buffalo were slaughtered nearly to extinction, railroads crisscrossed the landscape, and settlers scattered across the Plains in droves. Soon, several Fort Dodge soldiers who mustered out of the Army joined by a number of civilian employees became citizens of a newly chartered town five miles away, originally named Buffalo City. After the railroad arrived in 1872, the town was christened, Dodge City.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Irving Dodge commanded Fort Dodge and was instrumental in the founding of Dodge City, for who the town was ultimately named.
1872-75 witnessed a few Indian atrocities that kept Fort Dodge on the alert, serving as a supply depot and staging point for troops. After the Cheyenne were defeated on Sappa Creek April 1875, ending the Red River War, the traditional Plains tribes horse culture had all but come to an end. In September 1878, Chief Dull Knife and three hundred Cheyenne escaped from their Indian Territory reservation. They raided and foraged as they made their way north to their ancestral home in Montana, only to be either returned to the reservation, killed, or in the case of Dull Knife, be tried at Dodge City in 1879. The need for Fort Dodge diminished, and the last small detachment of troops left the garrison in June 1882. With the “Indian Problem” considered resolved, Fort Dodge was abandoned, though to the consternation of Dodge City citizens still fearing possible Indian attacks.
A NEW BEGINNING FOR FORT DODGE
With Fort Dodge’s purpose fulfilled, General Sheridan proposed that the facility be closed, despite protests from locals and the press alike. Officially closed and abandoned in October 1882, some original buildings were destroyed, removed, or repurposed. Fort Dodge experienced a land rush on the military 12,000 acre reservation in 1886. Later, the remaining land surrounding the post was sold at public auction in November 1906—but not before a large tract was set aside by the State of Kansas to develop a soldier’s home. President Grover Cleveland signed a bill granting 126.7 acres and the remaining buildings at Fort Dodge for the project in March 1889. Citizens of Dodge City raised funds to purchase the property, and by New Year’s Day, 1890, the site was ready to receive qualified applicants.
Though the long and difficult history of the military post known as Fort Dodge’s purpose to protect travelers on the Santa Fe Trail ended, the post was refitted to serve retired Kansas veterans as a nursing facility and retirement community. The Kansas State Soldier’s Home continues her legacy of providing peace, stability, and care for those in need. The story of Fort Dodge remains a point of pride in annals of Kansas and Dodge City history.
ANTHONY WOOD grew up in historic Natchez, Mississippi, fueling a life-long love of history. He is the author of A Tale of Two Colors, a series of Civil War historical novels based on the real-life wartime journey of his ancestor, Columbus Nathan “Lummy” Tullos. His writing has won a number of awards, including a Will Rogers Medallion for his Western short story “Not So Long in the Tooth.” He serves as Managing Editor of Saddlebag Dispatches.
