Accidental World Tour – Dodge City, Kansas

June 22, 2026

A short week and a half after our kickoff to the Accidental World Tour of 2026 in Portugal, I departed for a week-long solo camping trip in the Jemez Mountains. On the way, I stopped in Dodge City, Kansas, and did not regret it.

History

Settled in 1847, Fort Mann acted as a safe haven for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. After collapsing in 1848, the US Army returned and rebuilt the fort as Fort Atkinson and occupied the area until 1853 before moving further north.

After the Civil War, in 1865, the Army rebuilt Fort Dodge to aid in the American Frontier Wars. With the Santa Fe Railroad approaching from the east, the region became a frequent stop for trade and cattle-driving.

Later in the 1800s, it became a popular town in the Old West, hosting names such as Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday.

The city has continued to grow and now boasts a population over 27,000. Today, tourism is an important aspect of the town’s economy but the primary industry in the area is meat processing and packaging.

Boot Hill Museum

In 1947, the Dodge City Jaycees founded the Boot Hill Museum, a collection of natural and cultural artifacts, in a 3,000 square-foot building. Over the years, the museum has expanded and has seen additional buildings added to the complex, including a jailhouse, a gift shop and a steam locomotive that is presently parked in front of the museum’s main building.

Today, the collection boasts over 60,000 artifacts mainly focused on the town from the 1870s to the 1920s.

The Museum also offers seasonal shows, including a reenactment of a gunfight on old Front Street, and a musical revue dinner in the Long Branch Saloon, adjacent to the museum’s main building.

My Visit

I pulled into town and headed straight to the museum, arriving shortly after 4:00. I paid for the Marshall Pass, which included the gunfight and the dinner show, then set out to explore the museum.

The main building houses the gift shop and much of the region’s historical and pre-settlement cultural artifacts, talking about the use of the area by the indigenous peoples, and the early days of settlement.

From there, you’re allowed to cross old Front Street where you encounter a row of Old West storefronts lined a continuous wooden boardwalk, many interconnected inside like one long rambling building. The storefront on one end is a true store selling wares such as salt water taffy and sarsaparilla (and yes, I did indeed purchase some of each, along with a half-pound of various fudges). The remaining storefronts housed much of what is considered the “old collection,” which is quite representative of many of the Old West museums I have visited in my days – a jailhouse scene, a saloon scene, a barbershop scene, and plenty of guns on display.

I meandered through the labyrinth of mannequins and firearms before emerging from the shop at the other end, which houses an ice cream shop.

Off to one side, beyond the initial taffy and sarsaparilla store, is an old jailhouse – an old two-cell house that was “stolen” from nearby Fort Dodge in the dead of night by local Jaycees and brought to the site in 1953. It’s up on a hill that houses a variety of graves of locals buried there in the 1870s.

Beyond the cemetery is one more small building that discusses the impact the Old West had on American culture in the mid-20th century.

I breezed through that exhibit because the scheduled start time of the gunfight was quickly approaching. I went back down the hill and took a seat toward that previously mentioned end store, as I was told that’s where most of the action was going to take place.

The Gunfight

Before long, an announcement came over the loudspeaker and beckoned us to sit for the show, then at 6:00, a handful of bandits came busting out of the store with bandanas around their noses and mouths and canvas sacks of cash. They ran with their bounty toward a group of their compatriots waiting for them in the street and were chased out of the store by the apparent shop owner, a little old lady reminiscent of Granny from the old Sylvester and Tweety Bird cartoons. Brandishing a shotgun, she fired at the robbers, the other gangsters in the street fired back, the sheriff and his deputies showed up, fired back and a massive firefight ensued. Eventually, the sheriff and one of the bad guys were the only ones left when they suddenly “noticed” the audience sitting there watching it all unfold.

Confounded, the sheriff reckoned that they couldn’t start us at the end of the story so he raised the dead and told them they had to rewind and tell the story from the beginning.

The full story unfolded in front of us over the course of the next 15 or so minutes before culminating in a reenactment of… the previous reenactment…

The players all took a bow, then went around offering photos of the cast for an at-will donation. The smallest bill I had was a twenty so of course I used one on an inexpensive black and white photo of the crew.

They all stood around and took pictures with other guests and signed copies of the photo, then we all dispersed. I went back into the gift shop for bric-a-brac, then went back out to the street to wait for the Long Branch Saloon to open for dinner.

Long Branch Saloon Variety Show and Dinner

We were greeted and ushered into the saloon and queued up for a cafeteria-style serving of dinner of pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green beans, and a biscuit.

The food was remarkably good and I washed it down with a canned whiskey cola and that’s when I decided I simply do not like whiskey. I have tried and tried but just cannot adapt my taste buds to appreciate it.

At any rate, I was seated with a family of four and not long after dinner was under way, the show started.

It kicked off with an introduction from the “saloon owner” (a young kid who, I’m assuming, based solely on how he carried himself, was fresh out of his senior year in high school drama club), the “bartender” (not much older), then the can-can dancers came out for a routine. “Miss Kitty” (drama club teacher? Perhaps…) came out and ran the remainder of the show which was frequently interrupted by the saloon owner’s wife, who desperately wanted to be part of the show, a la Lucy in I Love Lucy, and a teetotaler who brandished the ubiquitous sign, “Lips that touch liquor shall not touch ours.” She was made up to be a frumpy, overweight, “ugly” woman so that the consensus was supposed to be “well, that’s not a problem” but that ideal is severely outdated and mean-spirited.

More singing, more dancing, recognition for service members in the audience, the show ended. I headed out and before I knew it, I was at the Silver Spur Vintage Inn & Suites for a night’s rest before I continued on to the Camping Trip That Wasn’t™ (read more about that debacle in my next post.)

Conclusion

With this adventure, I finally had reason enough to add the Kansas sticker to my sticker map on my corkboard.

It was a typical Old West museum, a fun and adventurous gunfight reenactment, and a wildly entertaining dinner revue that was absolutely right up my alley. It was reminiscent of the Golden Horseshoe Revue that played for so very many years at Disneyland and, as a direct result, smacked me upside the head with plenty of nostalgia. Overall, definitely a stop worth making.

As always, pictures of my adventure at the Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City, KS, can be found in my Photo Diary. Please note, I made an effort to video-record the gunfight so, as my camera was occupied, I got no photographs of it.

Please be sure to check back for my report on the Camping Trip That Wasn’t™, coming very soon.

Until then!

-Phil