Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday & Dodge City | History Traveler Episode 8

[Music] in the years after the Civil War there was a huge boom in the urban population in the United States and since people in the urban areas don't have the ability to grow their own food or raise their own livestock this increase in the urban population also led to an increase in the demand for beef which you can see a lot of behind me so the demand for beef was in the cities but the supply was down in Texas so there's this unique period in American history where you have all of these Cowboys that are going down to Texas the rounding up cattle and then driving them north to the rail lines that we're running through Kansas and Nebraska and other points to the Midwest so that the cattle could be shipped to the stockyards in Missouri Chicago places like that well at the end of these cattle trails you have these booming cow towns like Abilene and Wichita and probably the most famous and notorious of them all Dodge City which is where I happen to be today so Dodge City had a reputation of being one of the most crazy wicked towns in all of the United States for a certain period of time there were a lot of famous lawmen and outlaws that pass through Dodge City including Wyatt Earp which is a personal favorite of mine because tombstone is one of my favorite movies ever I can quote the entire thing from beginning and see Bat Masterson came through here I think the James brothers also passed the Dodge City at one point just all kinds of interesting characters so today we're gonna go through and kind of look at what is still in Dodge City I think a lot of the original structures are pretty much gone but they have a museum called Boot Hill Museum that we're gonna look at this afternoon that has a bunch of different artifacts and the original Boot Hill Cemetery so pretty excited about this should be interesting so this statue is called El Capitan and it commemorates the Texas Longhorn about 4 million head of these things were driven up to the Santa Fe Railroad here in Dodge City pretty iconic breed of cattle for the Old West so this is historic front Street this is where all of the original buildings and the business district of Dodge City would have stood so there have been like saloons and trading establishments where buffalo hunters would come in and do business there was a fire that burned down all the buildings I think in the 1880s and then they rebuilt it all in brick but a lot of those old structures had been kind of recreated with the museum gonna take a look at later on here's the old Santa Fe Depot so the Santa Fe a rail line would have ran right through here and there was a law in Dodge City that you couldn't bring your guns north of the railroad which is right there and you can see here is the historic area of Front Street and making sure that that law is enforced is the man himself Wyatt Earp famous lawman of Dodge City later became even more famous in Tombstone Arizona the famed gunfight at the OK Corral he's one of my favorite historic figures of the Old West can you honestly have any statues in Dodge City and not have one for Doc Holliday the man it's kind of interesting even though Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday met down in Texas they really forge through their friendship right here in Dodge City and of course Doc Holliday was part of the gunfight at the OK Corral later on in tombstone kind of cool to be walking these streets where these guys walked and gosh I really just want to turn around and go home and watch tombstone right now without a doubt the most quotable movie of all time and there's no argument on that all right and now we are at the famous Boot Hill and ready to go into the Boot Hill Museum [Music] okay so here's the old Fort Dodge Jail which is quite a bit smaller than what I would have expected okay so here's the inside of the jail kinda cool and complete with sanitary facilities kind of an interesting story about this old jail structure right here apparently this belonged to the Kansas soldiers home at one point which was owned by the state and whenever the Boot Hill museum tried to purchase it they said that they couldn't sell it and they couldn't donate it because of the state property but if it happened to be stolen well then they wouldn't press charges so there was a group of men and you can see on the picture right here head literally came in with horses and tied ropes to this thing and drugged it off kind of funny [Music] all right so here is the original famous Boot Hill Cemetery and a lot of the markers have been burned up by prairie fires and everything overtime but they still have record of some of the people who were buried here including an unknown kid who was hanged in 1876 I wonder what he did so here's the thing for a guy named George hoy who was one of the few men that Wyatt Earp killed while he was a lawman here in Dodge City ok so at first I didn't understand what these little stones sticking up were but boots get it ok and as you can see they still have space available at the Boot Hill Cemetery ok so behind me is a full replica of what Front Street would have looked like during the 1870s 1880s here in Dodge City and they've used it to basically house a museum that has a lot of artifacts so being that Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson some of those others had their start here in Dodge City I'm pretty pumped to go in here and take a look around cuz I'm sure that they're gonna have some some cool artifacts alright so we're going into the Boot Hill Museum and the lady that I bought the tickets from said there's 25,000 artifacts here including all these pipes so I think we've got a lot to see so this thing is called clean Clara and I noticed that it said must be 18 years old to view which I thought was a joke but then I looked inside and yeah you you need to be 18 they view this so the sign was encouraging and it did not disappoint guns guns guns a bunch of old Winchester's here and then bunch of other frontier firearms most of these are percussion cap and ball firearms and then we get to the iconic Buffalo guns pretty crazy so this is kind of neat these are some guns that you might have carried if you were a gambler like Doc Holliday or something pretty cool hey speaking of Doc Holliday here's a double derringer like what he might have used Robert clay Allison so this is a guide that came into U Dodge City with the intent of killing Wyatt Earp and it didn't go so well for him but this is his colt model 1878 revolver pretty cool yeah so here we got some of the famous lawmen of Dodge City most prominent among them would be Bat Masterson so this is a pistol that once belonged to Bat Masterson he had a lot of pistols though that he bought and then kind of carved up and then he would sell off to make money and then of course the man himself Wyatt Earp who made a name for himself really in Tombstone where he really became famous but was a lawman in Dodge City before going on to Tombstone Arizona and that is the kind of weapon that he would have carried good grief look at that thing twelve inch barrel there's kind of an interesting display of handcuffs from the 1800s and little ball and chain keep a prisoner from running away but the most interesting set of cuffs in here are these things called McKenzie mitts they were invented in 1925 and are just cool as heck look at those things and some thumb cuffs the recreation of what an old drug store would have looked like as here's a recreation of like an old saloon or gambling hall from Dodge City or from the Old West in general pretty cool I'm going to refrain from quoting like one of the hundred different lines from the movie tombstone I have pretty cool here's a document that was signed by Bat Masterson and this is a complaint that was lodged by a prostitute that was the result of some quarrel where she got called some pretty terrible names that I'm not going to repeat [Music] [Music] [Music] very cosmopolitan so that was the Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City kind of cool it's kinda neat that they took the museum and basically reconstructed the original town there's kind of a guide saying hey this is what this store would have been with this world have been pretty enjoyable especially for somebody that is a fan of the movie tombstone like me to get to see where Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp kind of forged their friendship and other lawmen like Bat Masterson pretty neat experience so if you're ever in Dodge City very cool place to go what the heck [Music]

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 121,057

Rating: 4.9513888 out of 5

Keywords: history, history traveler, history underground, old west, doc holliday, wyatt earp, bat masterson, dodge city, kansas, cowtown, cowboys, cattle trails, santa fe railroad, boot hill, shootout, guns

Id: quEH1juYt8w

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 30 2019