Abilene - the First Cow Town

All of a sudden in Abilene the open coaches of the early railroads began arriving daily crowded with gamblers, saloon owners, prostitutes, liquor salesman and all the material and supplies to turn Abilene into a wild town: frame dwelling, roulette wheels, crystal chandeliers, mahogany bars, revolvers and ammo for the factories in Bridgeport and Hartford.  Abilene was beginning to look and act like the early mining towns.

At the most famous saloon in Abilene, two dozen bartenders and three orchestras operated around the clock to keep the waddies happy with fiddles and trumpets providing the spirited entertainment.  Abilene was no longer that small cow town on the railroad.

Cowpokes were paid at the end of their cattle drives in minted gold which soon found its way into the hands of madams, girls, gamblers, and saloon keepers.  Even Wyatt Earp was called in to maintain law and order.  Texas Street was alive with gunfire and whiskey 24 hours a day...

Not so happy for those neighbors in Kansas...next time

Solving the Cattle Problem Post Civil War

In 1867, the Kansas Pacific Railroad was being built westward from Kansas City to Denver at amazing speed.  By 1868 the iron rails were already 164 miles west of Kansas City at a place named by its founders for no particular reason - Abilene.

With a few primitive livestock cars added, history began with the first Texan trail herds by rail to Chicago.
As the railroad moved westward, so did the cattle towns that grew up on those rail lines. Abilene, Hays City, Dodge City, Ellsworth and Newton, all began as "track towns" beside the railroad.  Boxcar depots, telegraph stations, water tank, windmill, underground post office and saloons sprang up along the tracks of the Kansas Pacific Railroad.

On a personal note - I grew up in such a track town in northern Indiana (Garrett) which only existed because the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ran through the center of the town.

Abilene became the first of those cow towns and set the pattern for the western "Cow Town" and the stamping grounds of the Texan cowpoke.

Next we look at the similarity of the cow town and the mining town...