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The Cattle Towns
"Excellent . . . readable and persuasive. . . . One of the most refreshing and rewarding approaches to be applied to western history topics in many years."-American Historical Review
412 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1983
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July 10, 2020
This account of the cattle towns of Kansas in the 1870s will not be anyone's idea of escapist summer reading. Relying on newspapers from the five towns covered (Wichita, Abilene, Ellsworth, Caldwell and Dodge City), Dykstra depicts tensions in each. Not only is each burg competing to win (or hold) the cattle drives up from Texas but also clashes between townspeople and the outlying farms. One element that stands out is how quickly each town's heyday ended. Like much of the West, these towns were once wild and now settled; this book chronicles that short epoch. Not a page-turner but an well-researched piece of frontier history. It would also make a good resource for western writers. I could see Larry McMurtry having a well-thumbed copy somewhere in his library.
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