Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1990
Abstract
Ironically the feature to which this book serves as a corrective is doubtless a major reason for its publication-the notoriety of the name Dodge City in the popular consciousness. Haywood points out in his last chapter, and adequately demonstrates in his text, that the Front Street reconstruction and the wild and wooly stories of the "Beautiful, Bibulous Babylon of the Frontier" that Easterners hear are not an adequate representation of the town even in its boisterous salad days. He also points out that Dodge was consciously cultivating its wild image as a means of economic development during its cattle town days. Yet neither he nor some of the rest of us who have tried to provide "the rest of the story" will prevail ultimately with the buffs who genuinely want it to have been otherwise.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly SUMMER 1990 .Copyright 1990 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.