Neighborhood Problems

All this inhibitions of early Abilene was distasteful to the neighboring Methodist farmers of Kansas.  They viewed fornication and whiskey guzzling with anything but welcome. Eventually a law was passed through the Kansas legislature forbidding all the loading of cattle at Abilene which was a death sentence to the town's lively nightlife.

The cattle men simply moved on to Hays City down the railroad where by 1872 one million longhorns were boarded on railroad cars bound for steak lovers in Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

In retrospect, for the decade following the Civil War, Abilene was known as both a suburb of Texas and a suburb of Hell, depending on your viewpoint.  A good many of these  cow pokes stayed on and became Kansas residents in the boot hills of Dodge City and Newton, making a part of Kansas forever Texas.

Next - the cowboy persona...