W elcome to Dodge City, the biggest, wildest, wickedest little city on the continent, was the exuberant greeting given out-of-town visitors to Dodge\u27s Fourth ofJuly celebration in 1883. The assessment projected was a selfcongratulatory one shared and frequently envied by the rest of the United States. Dodge was enjoying the peak of its cattle-town fame and prosperity as the quintessential frontier boom town, unrestrained by convention, the very embodiment of waywardness and wantonness. Few communities seemed more at odds with the national social values and mores that later generations would label Victorian. As a mecca for free-spending cowboys it was a place to let off steam, live high, and have fun. For the merchants, gamblers, joint operators, and cattlemen it was a time to fleece the unwary, reap handsome profits, and grow respectably rich.
