Gettin' the Heck Into Dodge
©2013 Text and Photos by LeeZard
Saturday July 27 Pueblo, CO to Dodge City, KS
I leave the hot high desert of Pueblo after an
enlightening and enjoyable week in Colorado. Last night I slept on a bed of
gravel in Lake Pueblo State Park; that’s all they have there except for the
rugged prickly desert floor. Gravel is still better than baby cacti. Unfortunately, I lost the function of my
self-inflating air mattress so it was a restless, sleepless night and I am moving
slowly. Nonetheless, it is time to leave Colorado.
I gathered some terrific stories here and enjoyed
time with dear family and friends. I still love this state, might have to
settle here one day. Now it’s back to business.
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| Young Corn |
I am driving east on U.S. 50, paralleling and
crisscrossing the Arkansas River rather than super-speeding along I-70 to the
north. It doesn’t take very long to reach the vast wide-open spaces of the high
prairie. About 25-miles out of Pueblo I begin to see the occasional cornfield
and a few very large cattle operations, harbingers of the nearing Kansas State
Line.
This is certainly what they must mean by
“hardscrabble farming;” the earth is a light tan, very dry and, I’m certain,
difficult to plow. I can sense how tough it must be to survive here even during
good times. I also gain new respect for the pioneers who first settled this unforgiving
part of the country.
I slowly lose elevation as I near Kansas,
dropping more than 2,000 feet from Pueblo’s 4,200+ feet. Now there are many
more cornfields, very large cornfields. These are family farms, some with newer
equipment, many with rusted skeletons of old machinery sitting around.
After a long day on the road, I drive into Dodge City, KS on what else, Wyatt
Earp Boulevard.
First and foremost, Dodge City was a cow town. It thrived in the beginning when the Texas Cowboys drove their Longhorns up the trail to ship the cattle by rail.
First and foremost, Dodge City was a cow town. It thrived in the beginning when the Texas Cowboys drove their Longhorns up the trail to ship the cattle by rail. |
| An old 1950s TV sits in the Boot Hill Museum running an endless loop of "Gunsmoke." |
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| Wyatt Earp Statue on Wyatt Earp Blvd. |
This is also Farmville and happens to be on the
map as I meander my way toward the East Coast. I am interested in its current
history.
In spite of myself, however, I am excited to be
here. I will stay several days to also soak up the deep, iconic history of
Dodge. How can one not visit the real
Boot Hill? In another life, I probably lived on a ranch in Texas or Oklahoma. Why
else would a kid who grew up in New York City love the smell of horse pies?
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Sunday July 29, Boot Hill, Dodge City
Yes, there really is a Boot Hill here and, it is
the original Boot Hill of the Old West – a cemetery for drifters, bad guys and
those without family and/or the means for the traditional burial grounds. Today
it is the center of the tourism industry which is about 40 percent of Dodge
City’s economy, pouring in about $150-million annually.
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Penny is a 63-year old native of Dodge. She
tends bar at the replica Long Branch Saloon on Boot Hill. She says Dodge City
is a mixed economic bag. She explains there’s been a long drought that predates
the recession and it’s affecting agriculture.
In 2008, she says, a big tornado
touched down in a nearby community bringing construction workers into the area and keeping employment steady. A new casino west of town also helped. Tourism, though, did
take a hit.
Seventy-year old Sally Brim has run the old ice cream parlor on Boot Hill for 12-years. She tells me before the recession they’d see about 90,000 visitors a year. Recently, she says, it’s dropped by about 20,000-30,000, a figure confirmed by the local visitors and convention bureau. It’s taken a personal toll as well. “Grocery prices have doubled,” says Sally, “and because I live about 20-miles away gas prices have been especially rough.”
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Monday July 29, Just Outside of Dodge City
Agriculture makes up the lion’s share of Ford County’s (and Dodge City’s) economy and today I am driving the brown dirt section roads that divide the fields, mostly corn and milo, not too far outside of Dodge (sorghum, also called milo, is a crop raised for cattle feed). There was a steady rain last night – not enough to affect the drought but enough to turn parts of these roads soft and slippery.
Agriculture makes up the lion’s share of Ford County’s (and Dodge City’s) economy and today I am driving the brown dirt section roads that divide the fields, mostly corn and milo, not too far outside of Dodge (sorghum, also called milo, is a crop raised for cattle feed). There was a steady rain last night – not enough to affect the drought but enough to turn parts of these roads soft and slippery.
What is this city dude thinking (slaps forehead!)? While I am
getting a feel for the countryside outside of Dodge, there is nary a farmer in
sight; they are all out working the fields . I need
another source of information on the state of the agricultural economy.
Surprisingly, I find the source back in town.
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| The Feed Store is that Little Building on the Left |
Brian Brower has run the feed department for
Pride Ag Resources in Dodge for 17-years. The feed store is small compared to
Pride Ag’s main business, a monumental white 1.8-million bushel grain elevator
sitting just across the way.
Brower says the company buys about $12-million
worth of grain per year – corn, soybeans, milo and wheat – and re-sells it to
millers across the region.
“Even with the drought and the recession,” he
says, “we’ve stayed pretty decent but we’re just now starting to see the
affects of both on our economy.”
He explains that agriculture usually runs about
two or more years behind the rest of the economy and bad times are just getting
here.
“People aren’t buying near as much feed, there
isn’t as much livestock as there was even a year ago. With grain for example,
this year we are taking in half of what we normally do in the wheat crop. So we
are now starting to feel the affects of the recession.”
Brower also runs a small cattle farm outside of
town. “Like a lot of cattle ranchers, I’m considering whether or not it’s worth
it to keep on going.”
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