Legends of the Old West - DODGE CITY Ep. 2 | “Wyatt Earp, Lawman & Legend”

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

Wyatt Earp crisscrosses the West as a stagecoach driver, a teamster and a lawman. He experiences tragedy and triumph, and he builds a reputation as a relentless lawman. By the summer of 1876, he and his friend Bat Masterson are on patrol in Dodge City with an all-star cast of legendary lawmen. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Dodge City began life as a rowdy camp called Buffalo City. It progressed into an unofficial town with the coming of the railroad in 1872. Over the next three years, it had lawmen. It wasn't a totally lawless place, but fights and killings were common. That started to change in 1876.

The previous year, the people of Dodge made a commitment to beef up their law enforcement. By the time the cattle drives began to arrive in the spring and early summer of 1876, and for the next four seasons, Dodge City had a lineup that could be viewed as an all-star team with the benefit of hindsight. There were the Earp brothers, Wyatt and occasionally Morgan, the Masterson brothers, Ed, Bat, and Jim, and there were Bill Tillman, Charlie Bassett, and Neil Brown at various times.

And when they needed more help for a posse, gunfighter and gambler Luke Short joined the team. In the summer of 76, the law truly came to Dodge. It had an instant impact, and it started with Wyatt Earp. with Wyatt Earp. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you.

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This is Episode 2, Wyatt Earp, Lawman and Legend. As with the Masterson family, the Earp family included a set of brothers. There were six in all. Newton, James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, and Warren. Their father, Nicholas, had a wanderlust like the Masterson's father. Nicholas uprooted and transplanted his family several times in the space of a few years. They went from Kentucky, Illinois to Iowa to California and then to Missouri. It was there, in Lamar, Missouri, that a young Wyatt Earp gained his

first experience as a lawman. Wyatt's arrival in Lamar was probably an attempt to settle down. He'd been on the move steadily for several years. He moved with his family out to California in 1864, but like his older brothers and the Masterson boys, he had no interest in farming. His older brothers Newton, James, and Virgil had all fought in the Civil War. By the time the family moved to California, Newton was off on his own. Virgil was still in the Army. James had been seriously injured and discharged, and he made the trip while he recovered. But in Nevada, James split off from the family and went into a little mining town. He discovered that he enjoyed the saloon life, and it became his vocation for the rest of his life.

When Virgil finished his service, he headed west to join the family. And like all the boys, he was not cut out to be a farmer. He became a stage driver on a route from Los Angeles to San Bernardino, California, to Prescott, Arizona, with occasional stops in Salt Lake City. Then in the summer of 1865, when Wyatt was 17 years old, he joined Virgil in the adventure. For the next four years, they worked together and separately as they piloted stagecoaches and hauled freight as teamsters all over the West. In 1868, after just four years in California,

Nicholas Earp moved the family back to the Midwest. They settled in Lamar, Missouri, where Nicholas's brother was a minister and his eldest son, Newton, was a farmer. The following year, in 1869, Wyatt arrived in town. He was now 21 years old and had spent four years traveling the West. He probably wanted to settle down a little bit, and it looked like he would. He was appointed town constable and quickly fell in love. He got married early in the new year of 1870, and by that time, Virgil had joined the family in Lamar. In the fall, Wyatt was officially elected constable, and his father

Nicholas was the justice of the peace. So the Earps were doing well in Lamar. But the good times didn't last long. Shortly after Wyatt's election, his wife and unborn child died. The cause of death is still a mystery, but most believe it was some sort of sickness. The cause of death is still a mystery, but most believe it was some sort of sickness. That began Wyatt's downward spiral. He and Virgil got into a fight with his wife's brothers. He was taken to court for either stealing or not repaying a debt. And then he was accused of being a horse thief. The crime occurred in Oklahoma, which was called Indian Territory at the time. He was arrested and arraigned in April 1871,

but he was never convicted of the crime. In the fall and winter of 1871, Wyatt spent a season hunting buffalo on the western plains of Kansas. And according to tradition, that's where he met Bat Masterson. he met Bat Masterson. Billy Dixon, the buffalo hunter and scout who became good friends with Bat Masterson, wrote in his memoir, Late in Life, that Bat and Wyatt met at a camp during the hunting season of 1871-72. Wyatt would have been 23. Bat would have been just 17.

Bill Tillman, who became a legendary lawman in his own right, supported the story. But very few details of the meeting survive, because, of course, it was just a meeting of two young guys at a buffalo camp. Bat and Wyatt weren't famous. They hadn't done anything yet. But that was about to change for both of them. While Batts spent the next few years hunting buffalo and earning a strong reputation with the Battle of Adobe Walls and the expedition of Colonel Miles, Wyatt restarted his life as a lawman. He began in the town of Ellsworth, Kansas. Ellsworth was the next big stop on the Santa Fe Railroad after Abilene.

As a city policeman, Wyatt was cool under pressure and absolutely fearless. The classic story that came out of his short time in Ellsworth was that he single-handedly confronted and disarmed noted gunfighters Ben and Bill Thompson, and he stared down a gang of drunken Texas cowboys. Wyatt's next stop was Wichita, which was again the next big stop on the Santa Fe Railroad. As the railroad moved west across Kansas, each town became the new popular destination for Texas cattle drives. And that meant that each new town was full of Texas cowboys who'd spent

months on the trail. When they hit town, they wanted to raise nine kinds of hell. So it was probably in Wichita where Wyatt began to perfect the art of buffaloing. He would whack a surly cowboy over the head with his pistol to subdue him and take him to jail. It was quick and painful, but far less violent than a gunfight. And soon enough, the four middle brothers began to live and work together as a group, to some extent. Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp worked as lawmen, and their older brother Jim worked as a saloon and brothel keeper. But Wyatt wasn't entirely a straight-laced lawman. keeper. But Wyatt wasn't entirely a straight-laced lawman. He'd spent time working in saloons and brothels along the way, and he was no stranger to a card table. Like lots of men, he dabbled in many

things, especially in the winter months when the cattle herds were still down in Texas. Summer was the rowdy season in Kansas cow towns, and in the summer of 1875, Wyatt had an encounter with the man who went on to nearly kill Bat Masterson. Melvin King was a soldier, though he seemed to have extraordinary leeway as such. He was a drunk and a killer, and he often went on cattle drives from Texas to Kansas. While he was in Wichita in the summer of 75, he was drunk and armed with two pistols, despite the law that prohibited carrying guns in town. One night, he stood in the middle of town and boasted that he would kill Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp. Wyatt happened to be nearby, and he buffaloed Melvin King and took him to jail. Six months later,

King tried to kill Bat Masterson in the Lady Gay Saloon in a village called Sweetwater in the Texas Panhandle. King was furious that Bat was having drinks with a girl named Molly Brennan. King rushed into the saloon, shot and killed Molly, and shot Bat in the abdomen. Bat returned fire and killed Melvin King with a single bullet. That episode solidified Bat's growing reputation. He'd already impressed the people of Dodge City by holding his ground against a man who'd cheated him out of some money. He'd performed heroically at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, and he'd been a critical part

of an army expedition that rescued four girls from the Cheyenne. And in the late spring of 1875, when he'd recovered enough from his gunshot wound to travel, he went to Dodge City and reunited with Wyatt Earp. Wyatt's job as a lawman in Wichita ended abruptly in April 1876. The former marshal was running against the current marshal, Wyatt's boss. The former marshal accused the current marshal of intending to stack the police force with Wyatt's brothers, basically giving them jobs that weren't necessary, and the paychecks that came with them. Wyatt found the former marshal on the street and beat the crap out of him. Wyatt was arrested for disturbing the peace,

and that was the end of his career in Wichita. But Wichita's loss was Dodge City's gain. But Wichita's loss was Dodge City's gain. The hard, uncompromising temperament that got Wyatt ejected from Wichita was exactly what was needed in Dodge. Also, Wyatt's fearlessness. A month after Wyatt was fired, Dodge City's new chief deputy was literally run out of town by Texas Cowboys. It was just the latest in a long line of problems in Dodge. Dodge was originally a crude camp along the Arkansas River called Buffalo City. When the Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1872, the settlement changed its name to Dodge City, after the nearby Fort Dodge. A formal town was plotted, and refinements began to emerge, but it would still be another three years before Dodge was incorporated as an official town, and that step was taken after yet more violence. In 1872, a reported 25 men were killed in Dodge City and Byron's, with dozens more wounded in gunfights. A vigilance committee was established,

but members of the committee were implicated in the murder of William Taylor, a local African-American restaurant owner and well-regarded member of the community. Taylor's murder spurred the call to incorporate Dodge City into a proper town with a proper police force. So in 1876, when Wyatt arrived, Dodge City was very young even by frontier standards. But it was growing quickly from a dirty crossroads for buffalo hunters to a formal town that was fit for women and children and respectable businesses. And that growth was fueled by the giant cattle herds that began to arrive from Texas with the coming of the railroad.

Holding pens, counting houses, and banks were needed. Bankers, lawyers, and preachers soon arrived, along with general store proprietors, wives, children, nannies, and the like. The sod structures of the old camp were replaced with wood buildings for offices, schools, churches, dry goods stores, and restaurants. And some of those were quickly replaced with brick buildings. But even with those upgrades, and municipal elections and professional law enforcement on the way, Dodge City remained a house divided against itself. Trail bosses from Texas all but demanded that Dodge City be an open city for their thirsty cowboys. Some threatened that if their cowboys were not able to blow off steam unimpeded, they would take next year's cattle herd and their cowboys were not able to blow off steam unimpeded, they would take next year's cattle herd and their cowboys' wages to other Kansas towns. Some cowboys took a more

direct approach. They rode up and down the streets and fired their guns to essentially overpower and dominate the town. These wild, drunken, and potentially deadly shootings did not sit well with one half of the population. Two political factions arose in Dodge City. The Reformer faction wanted to clamp down on the rambunctious elements in town. The opposite faction was nicknamed the Dodge City Gang. The gang was aligned with the owners of saloons and entertainment establishments, and the cattle merchants. They wanted to be as welcome as possible to the seasonal influx of the cowboys and their money. The two factions traded political dominance in local elections, and the lawmen were caught in the middle.

They had to find ways of imposing order to satisfy the reformers while also not alienating saloon owners and cattlemen. A halfway solution arrived courtesy of the railroad. The tracks ran right through the middle of town, so Dodge City set up a similar system to the one that would arrive in Deadwood in the near future. The tracks were a dividing line. The north side of town was the respectable side. It was a no-go zone for armed or liquored-up cowboys. Any antics would quickly reward a cowboy with a cracked skull and a night in jail. Trail bosses were told of the line of demarcation,

and they were expected to pass it along to their crews before turning them loose in town. Now, on the south side of the tracks, most anything was tolerated except outright violence and riding your horse into a saloon. You couldn't do that. It was bad for business. It was technically against the law to wear guns in town, but south of the line they were grudgingly tolerated. The Front Street Deadline, as it was called, was not perfectly observed at all times by all the cowboys, but it provided the town with a tenuous and workable understanding. It eased, but by no means erased,

the tensions between the town's polar opposite political factions. And it helped the town's lawmen. They now focused their attention primarily on the sporting district south of the tracks. But even then, policing just that side of town demanded lawmen who were nearly forces of nature unto themselves. They needed to be deliberate in their actions. They needed to be cunning and fearless. And by the summer of 1876, Dodge City had a whole new collection of lawmen who fit that bill, led by two groups of brothers.

The Mastersons and the Earps began to arrive in town. Together with a few others, they began to clean up Dodge and build their reputations as lawmen. their reputations as lawmen. Wyatt Earp didn't arrive in Dodge City to fanfare from the townspeople. Many were not thrilled that he had beaten up a former Marshal of Wichita, but the Mayor of Dodge offered Wyatt the newly vacant job of Deputy Marshal, and Wyatt accepted. Wyatt the newly vacant job of deputy marshal, and Wyatt accepted. Around the same time, Bat Masterson's younger brother Jim was also offered a job as a deputy marshal. In quick succession, Wyatt and Jim were on patrol in Dodge, and then Bat arrived. He was still recovering from his shootout with Melvin King in Sweetwater and used his walking cane to get around. shootout with Melvin King in Sweetwater and used his walking cane to get around.

Bat's mobility might have been limited at the time, but Wyatt said years later that Bat's gun hand was in working order. When Bat hit town, he had a new reputation for deadliness because of the Melvin King gunfight, and he was still popular with the locals because he had exercised a judicious temperament in the Raymond Ritter affair. With those two bona fides, he landed a job as the other deputy marshal. And just like that, Dodge City now had a town marshal and Wyatt, Bat, and Jim as deputies. Wyatt was 28 years old, Bat was 22, and Jim was 20. In that summer of 1876, Charlie Bassett was the county sheriff, and his undersheriff was Bill Tillman. Like the Earps and the Mastersons, Tillman was beginning a career that would eventually turn him into a legend.

So that summer, the first big cattle season in Dodge, you had Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Jim Masterson, Charlie Bassett, and Bill Tillman all working the same town. In due course and over the next few years, additional Earps and Mastersons moved in and out of Dodge City. Wyatt's older brother Jim was actually the first to arrive. He worked in the saloon and brothel business as always. Wyatt's younger brother Morgan would be added to the roster of deputy marshals by mid-summer. Batt's older brother Ed Masterson would come to town and join the others on the force. For a formerly lawless town, Dodge City quickly gained lots of law. In addition to the Earps and the Mastersons and Bassett and Tillman, Bill Duffy sometimes filled a role as a peace officer, and Luke Short was deputized into posses when needed. Since they were all based in Dodge,

they worked together and supported each other. They seemed to play a game of musical chairs with the law enforcement positions. They all bounced around from city marshal to deputy marshal to assistant marshal to special policeman to county sheriff to deputy sheriff to U.S. federal marshal and so on. And sometimes, one man filled multiple positions at the same time.

So in some sense, it almost didn't matter which person held which job at any particular time. They deputized each other when needed. They were all lawmen, and they all helped each other, regardless of the words on their specific badges. And even with all that, over the next three years, two of those noted lawmen rose to the top of the ranks in Dodge City. Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp. They were great individually, and they were unbeatable as a team. The different styles and temperaments of Bat and Wyatt complemented each other. Wyatt wasn't much of a talker, but he was quicker to use violence, and he was good at it.

He was renowned with his fists and slugged it out with several Texas cowboys. And if he thought his fists wouldn't do the job, he was a master at the art of buffaloing. It was an effective way to end a dispute, but there were those who said he was a little too quick to smash a cowboy over the head with a gun. But the opposition was minimal, especially with Bat Masterson on the other end of the spectrum. Bat was handy with a six-gun. He readily demonstrated his ability in quick-draw contests, but talking was his preferred method of de-escalation. When it came time to put the handcuffs onto some rowdy offender, he preferred surprise and guile to the use of fists or guns.

And he had the ultimate intangible, a reputation. Bat carefully cultivated and fed his reputation as a deadly gunfighter so that a gunfight wouldn't be necessary. The team of Bat and Wyatt was effective in tamping down violence in Dodge, even though the team didn't last very long that first summer. By mid-July, gold fever radiated out of Deadwood, South Dakota, and Colorado and Wyoming territories. Batt left his job and headed west to Cheyenne. While he built a nice stake for himself at the gambling tables, Morgan Earp filled his position as deputy marshal in Dodge. The combination of lawmen racked up arrests in the summer of 1876.

They made as many as 300 per month, which definitely showed the Cowboys that there was a new force in town. But it also helped the bank accounts of the deputies. They were paid bounties for each arrest, so the typically underpaid marshal's job was suddenly lucrative. But that was only in the summer months when cattle drives flooded Dodge City with wave after wave of cowboys. When summer turned to fall and the bitter cold of winter gripped western Kansas, the town didn't need so many deputies. Some of them scattered to try their luck with other ventures. In the winter of 1876-1877, Wyatt and Morgan went to Deadwood. 1876-1877, Wyatt and Morgan went to Deadwood. Bat came back to Kansas and teamed up with Bill Tillman and another soon-to-be-famous lawman, Neil Brown, for one last season hunting buffalo.

And when they all returned to Dodge in the spring of 1877, the lineup was different. Ed Masterson, the oldest Masterson brother, had taken Wyatt's place as a deputy marshal. Wyatt spent the near term as a shotgun rider for stagecoaches. Bat stayed in the gambling trade. He bought a stake in the Lone Star Dance Hall and Saloon. But by the time the cattle drives descended on the town, nearly all the old gang was back in law enforcement in some capacity. Ed Masterson, Bat Masterson, Jim Masterson, Morgan Earp, Charlie Bassett, and Bill Tillman were in the mix,

as well as a few others. And by July, so was Wyatt Earp. The cattle season of 1877 passed in much the same way as 1876, except this time, miraculously, there were no violent deaths recorded in Dodge. The year had also seen great change for the Earp clan. The patriarch, Nicholas, had taken the family back to California. Two of the three oldest brothers, Newton and Virgil, were in Prescott, Arizona with their wives and children. It'll be from there, two years in the future,

that Virgil will lure his brothers Jim, Wyatt, and Morgan to a new boomtown called Tombstone. But in the off-season of 1877 and 1878, there's still one major piece of the puzzle missing. Wyatt will meet a dentist-turned-gambler from Georgia. When everyone reunites in Dodge City in the summer of 1878, it'll be the wildest and bloodiest cattle season since the Mastersons and the Earps arrived in town, and it'll have tragic consequences for the Masterson family. Next time on Legends of the Old West, Wyatt meets Doc Holliday, and then Doc joins the crew in Dodge.

The summer of 1878 is violent, and it's the beginning of the end of the time in Dodge City for Bat and Wyatt. But when the remaining Masterson in town is threatened, Bat makes an urgent return. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. This season was researched by Aaron Aylsworth and written by Aaron and myself. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer.

If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com for more details and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Thanks for listening.