by Terry Lidral
Dodge City, Kansas and the Long Branch Saloon were etched into Western legend by the hit series “Gunsmoke.” The bar where Marshall Dillon and Miss Kitty spent 19 years and 500 episodes together romanticizing the Old West was an actual saloon built in 1874.
The town of Dodge City was rough and tough in the late Nineteenth Century. It was a place for buffalo hunters, railroad workers, cowboys, soldiers and drifters to gather for rest and recreation. And, after pay day, to spend the money jingling in their pockets. It was a wild and wooly place with no military law enforcement to keep the peace. Gambling and dancing girls, along with unchecked drinking, led to many a fight, both with and without guns.
The Long Branch Saloon was built on the premise of fair play with winnings from a game of ball.
Dodge City was a lawless place, but there were occasional displays of fair play and honor. The Long Branch Saloon was the product of an honorable game of ball between some cowboys and a group of soldiers. The story goes that a wager was placed on the game. If the soldiers lost, they would buy building materials to build a saloon. The soldiers lost, honored their bet and a saloon was built in 1874.
It wasn’t until 1878 that the saloon acquired the name of Long Branch. A rich farmer and rancher by the name of Chalkley Beeson, along with his business partner William Harris, bought the establishment and changed its name as well as its clientele.
William Harris gave his new saloon the name of Long Branch as a tribute to his hometown of Long Branch, New Jersey.
Much of the business in Dodge City in the late 1800’s came from the cattle drives that traveled along the Great Western Cattle Trail. Rich cattlemen and drovers alike spent time and money in the booming cow town of Dodge City. Beeson himself had been a cattle drover who had become a rich rancher. He knew drovers and he knew the men who owned the cattle. And he chose to cater to the money and refinement of the cattle owners.
Beeson’s partner, Harris, was a gambler who held a reputation as a gentleman. Beeson was a musician as well as a businessman. The two men kept the storefront simple, but the atmosphere and the entertainment put the Long Branch Saloon on an elevated level from the rest of Dodge City.
Beeson’s five-piece orchestra provided high-class entertainment every night of the week. Harris’ gambling games ranged from the five-cent “chuck-a-luck” all the way up to thousand-dollar poker pots. It was a thriving business that entertained the likes of Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp, who although they were lawmen, were also professional gamblers.
Gambling was not legal in Dodge City in the Nineteenth Century and lawmen levied fines on the saloon owners. But, the fines were not sufficient to curb the gambling trade. In fact, the money paid out in fines was considered a cost of doing business and provided funds for the salaries of local lawmen.
The Long Branch Saloon was considered to be a refined establishment in a rough and tumble frontier city.
Liquid refreshments served at the Long Branch included a large range of drinks to choose from. For those desiring nonalcoholic beverages, milk and sasparilla were available. Drinkers looking for something harder had their choice of all kinds of alcohol, including champagne and original Anheuser Busch beer. In keeping with a refined establishment, the Long Branch provided their customers with cold drinks year round. In winter, ice came from nearby rivers. The summer ice supply was shipped by train from the mountains of Colorado.
The Long Branch was considered to be the most refined saloon in Dodge City. But that didn’t mean there were no fights in the bar. The most notorious altercation said to have happened while it was owned by Beeson and Harris was a gunfight in 1879 between Frank Loving and Levi Richardson.
The story goes that Long accused Richardson of making advances towards his wife. A gun fight ensued across a table. Loving was hit by one bullet in the hand. Richardson was shot three times and died of his wounds. At the time of the shooting, Long was arrested for the killing. The coroner’s inquest exonerated Long of a crime by declaring the death a shooting in self-defense and the Long Branch was spared of a murderous reputation.
It was 1881 when Luke Short arrived in Dodge City and went to work for Harris as a faro dealer at the Long Branch. Short was a gunfighter and a professional gambler who had met Harris in Tombstone earlier that year. Short’s departure to Dodge came on the heels of the death of a man called Storm who Short shot three times in what was declared a justifiable shooting.
Dodge City’s “murder” in the Long Branch Saloon was deemed to be simply self defense
Beeson had become a well-known and much sought-after musician and band leader. He formed the Dodge City Cowboy Band and started to travel around the country. In 1883, Beeson sold his partnership in the Long Branch to Luke Short.
A month after Short became half owner of the Long Branch, Harris decided to run for mayor of Dodge City. Harris’ opponent, Lawrence E. Deger, was nominated and promoted by a local law and order group. Deger beat Harris in a landslide and the city council seats were filled by those running on the law and order ticket with Deger. The win meant trouble for Short and Harris and the Long Branch Saloon.
Dodge City’s Mayor Deger was a man of moral conscience and took action against drink and gambling.
The city council went to work to carry out their law and order agenda by immediately passing two ordinances aimed directly at shutting down the Long Branch Saloon and all other establishments of its kind in the city. Ordinance No. 70 called for “The Suppression and Vice of Immorality in the City of Dodge City.” Ordinance No. 71 would “Define and Punish Vagrancy.”
Both ordinances were readily signed by Mayor Deger. Five days after the ordinances were passed into law, three prostitutes working out of the Long Branch were arrested. This did not set well with Short and he ended up shooting at the arresting officer, leading to his own arrest and deportation from Dodge City.
Short ended up in Kansas City and began a campaign to reopen the saloons Deger and his law and order party had closed in Dodge City. The legendary Bat Masterson had joined him and Short looked up Charles E. Bassett who had been a former sheriff in Dodge City and a previous owner of the Long Branch Saloon. Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp, another legend of the time, had been deputies under Bassett and Short found a willing group of allies for his plan to reestablish himself back in Dodge. It all began with the presentation of a petition to Governor George W. Glick.
Meanwhile, the arrival of Wyatt Earp and several of his fellow gunslingers in Dodge City set things in motion when Mayor Deger decided to close down all gambling in the city. It was perfect timing to overthrow Deger and his moralists as it was the peak of the cattle drive and Dodge City was swarming with cowboys and cattleman with money in their pockets. Pressure came from the Santa Fe Railroad and Governor Glick as well as local businessmen to rescind the order and a proclamation was issued that would reopen gambling establishments, dance halls and saloons. The Long Branch Saloon was back in operation.
Short had won what was called the “Dodge City War” without bloodshed. A group given the name the Dodge City Peace Committee gathered at a newly opened dance hall and resolved their differences. But Short decided it was time to leave Dodge City and sell out of the Long Branch Saloon.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the cattlemen and the cattle drives disappeared.
Along with Harris, Short sold the Long Branch Saloon to Ray Drake and Frank Warren. Two years later, in 1895, there was a fire that burned out major businesses on Front Street. One of those businesses was the Long Branch. Cattle drives and the economic boom from the cowboys and cattlemen riding into Dodge was at that time coming to an end with the rise of railroad shipping. With the large economic hit to its economy from the railroad, Dodge City saw the businesses that had been burnt out close permanently.
In 1955, the television series Gunsmoke brought the city of Dodge and the Long Branch Saloon back to life. Although not built to replicate the original saloon from the 1880’s, Miss Kitty’s Long Branch met enough of the historic criteria to make the set believable. Much of the filming for the show was done on an exclusive set out in the countryside of Kanab, Utah with enough attention to detail to garner the flavor of the Wild West Dodge City.
The new Long Branch Saloon at Boot Hill Museum is an active bar and show room. Along with drinks and food, customers can take in a performance by the Long Branch Variety Show performers. An appearance by Chalkley Beeson and Miss Kitty can be guaranteed.
