But the West's wild town turned out to a mild stop. It was cool to visit such a historic site, and read about the town's spicy past until the Kansas legislature enacted a state-wide quarantine against Texas cattle in 1885, to protect the state's herds against epidemics, and ended Dodge City's heyday.
All that remains of that, however, is a reconstructed front street, sort of a movie set version, requiring admission through the Boot Hill gift shop, where you can buy Old West-style signs saying "The Boss knows best" and other Western souvenirs made in China. John Michael, however, did get a stylish string tie with a cowboy clasp. The rest of the downtown, while full of old buildings and shops, seemed asleep. That could have been due to the 103 degree heat. After a parking lot picnic of watermelon and sandwiches and a bit of walking around, we hit the trail.
Next up was western Kansas' table-top landscape of vast farms and tiny towns marked by huge grain silos visible from miles away. Along the way, we saw a couple of historical sites at the other end of the guidebook spectrum from Dodge City. In Fowler, taking a shortcut between highways, we came across the smallest cement jail in Kansas, a desolate bunker built in 1912. About 8 by 8 feet on a weedy lot in a neighborhood, it still had its cement bed. When I stuck my head in the open barred door, two swallows burst out.
We passed Plains and saw it billed itself as having the widest Main Street in America. Instant U-turn. As advertised, the brick-paved street was indeed wide -- two lanes each side, a tree-lined island in between. But there wasn't much on either sidewalk to cross that gulf -- a few stores, a post office, a couple of bars. But, boy, the street was wide.
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