Show wild cow towns hold spotlight oi of frontier one ot of the mosi romantic om antic roles in kansas history was played by the texas kansas cattle trails and the wild frontier towns which became shipping points for the herds it was joseph G mccoy who first decided to do something about a market for texas cattle there were millions of the cattle and they were more valuable than the buffalo which roamed the kansas prairies at first kansas towns I 1 interested in texas cattle at least most of them but abilene was although it was only a small dead place consisting of about a dozen log huts As soon as mccoy started building his depot at abilene the village awakened and teemed with activity by 1870 there were 4 hotels 10 boarding houses bouses 9 or 10 saloons and other business places one of the first buildings of course was as the jail sidewalks were of wood and soon trembled and clattered as boot beels clomped on them kansas cow towns held the spotlight of 0 the frontier there were eusworth ellsworth newton wichita larger and noisier than most and finally dodge city toughest of them all for 10 years dodge city was the wickedest wick edest town in the country but it fought hard bard to gain that distine cioni |