"Dodge City was a unique phenomenon in the history of the United States--a cowtown that sprang up virtually overnight and almost immediately captured the essence of life in the expanding American Southwest of the late nineteenth century." The author "chronicles the evolution of Dodge City from a frontier center for the buffalo trade to an important railroad terminus ... The entire panorama of the city's life is presented--the story of Wyatt Earp and other marshals ... the escapades of several famous gamblers and dance hall girls in the Long Branch saloon and the theatre in which Eddie Foy launched his career ..."