Bill Beer,  Country Music Kent

This song was inspired by a recent visit to Dodge City, Kansas, where the video was recorded at the Boot Hill Museum in the Old Town.

 

These days, Dodge uses the slogan "Get the Heck Into Dodge" to attract tourists to visit the city, but it was very different in the mid-19th century.

 

Dodge City was a cattle town; the end of the trail for the cattle drives from Texas, where the animals would be loaded onto trains for the markets in the East and the cowboys would finally be able to rest awhile.  Arriving in town with their pockets full of their trail-pay after two or three months in the saddle, they were looking for a bath, a bottle, a good meal and a bad woman, not necessarily in that order!  Inevitably, with drinking and gambling, tempers flared and bar-fights often broke out.  A city ordinance banned the carrying of guns north of the railroad tracks (the part of town where most of the bars and brothels were located) but, despite the ban, these fights often ended in gun-play and left one or more body to be planted in Boot Hill Cemetery.