Armchair Historian's blog

There's often a disconnect between those that want  to capitalize on a town's true historical value and that which has been assigned to it through popular culture.  I think of Dodge City's identity crisis as the town where Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson walked our streets versus Marshall Matt Dillon and the mountain range only a few miles away.

I'm not really a basketball fan.

I played — or rather proved to be an effective bench-warmer — ice hockey in college for one season my senior year up at the University of Kansas. I'm a nervous wreck if I can't catch my Colorado Avalanche games.

But nothing compares to March Madness.

 Dodge's long and storied history doesn't have to be relegated to the 19th Century shenanigans we're all so familiar with. There is some more recent history that is having an immediate affect on peoples lives. This comes from the Wichita Eagle's series "To the Stars: The Story of Kansas," talking about Dodge native Ellis "Skip" Cave.

http://www.kansas.com/news/state/kansas-history/story/701338.html

From the article:

"Dodge is the Deadwood of Kansas. Her incorporate limits are the rendezvous of all the unemployed scallwagism in seven states. Her principal business is polygamy without the sanction of religion, her code of morals is the honor of thieves, and decency she knows not."

- The Hays Daily Sentinel, 1870s -

I stumbled across this quote in late 2008 while doing some research for a post haunted Kansas -- a post I hope to have up later this month.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite places to go was the library. There seemed to be something almost sacred about the silence. Easily within your grasp — or the librarian's on a ladder — were countless millions of pages of knowledge.

It was a breath-taking thought. Well, as breath-taking as my sugar-addled 6-year-old brain could comprehend.

One place I never sought solace, however, was history. Even more so, local history.