The Long Branch: Blood, Whiskey, and Myth in the Queen of Cowtowns

Every legend needs a creation story, and the Long Branch Saloon, the most famous of Dodge City’s nineteen watering holes, has one of the most enduring. The tale, passed down through the decades, begins not with a business plan, but with a game of ball on the hot, dry Kansas plains. A friendly but competitive match between local cowboys and soldiers from Fort Dodge escalated with wagers. The final bet was a grand one: if the soldiers lost, they would provide the building materials to construct a proper saloon, a place where a man could enjoy a drink out of the relentless sun. The soldiers, as the story goes, lost the game but honored the wager. The materials promptly appeared, and around 1874, the Long Branch Saloon was born.

Chalk Beeson and Family

The truth of this story is less important than its purpose. It serves as a foundational myth, framing the Long Branch not as another commercial enterprise hungry for cowboy dollars, but as an establishment born of camaraderie and fair play. It is the first, romantic layer of legend applied to a place that would become synonymous with violence and vice.
In its early years, the saloon was an unremarkable, false-fronted building, typical of the frontier, changing hands between several owners, including future city marshal Charles E. Bassett and a man named A.J. Peacock. It was just one of many establishments catering to the Texas trade, a place of whiskey and cards, indistinguishable from its competitors lining the south side of the tracks. 

It would take a new kind of owner, a man with a vision that extended beyond raw profit, to transform the Long Branch from a simple bar into a legend.

​The Civilizing Hand of Chalk Beeson

The man who would give the Long Branch its soul was Chalkley "Chalk" Beeson. Born in Ohio in 1848, Beeson was a man of remarkable and varied talents, a figure who embodied the West's capacity for self-invention. He had been a cowboy in Texas, a skilled guide who led the Russian Grand Duke Alexei on a celebrity buffalo hunt, a stagecoach driver in Colorado, and, above all, a gifted musician. He arrived in Dodge City in 1875 and became a saloon owner purely by chance, when A.J. Peacock, unable to pay a debt in cash, handed him the deed to the Billiard Hall Saloon.

William Harris

Beeson discovered he had a talent for the business. On March 1, 1878, he and a new partner, William H. Harris, purchased the Long Branch. Harris was no simple publican; he was a formidable businessman in his own right, the Vice President of the Dodge City Bank and a man with a stake in the town's future. It was Harris who named the saloon after his hometown of Long Branch, New Jersey. Together, they set out to create something new in the wickedest city in the West: a refined establishment.

Their ambition transformed the saloon. Beeson, the musician, installed his own five-piece orchestra that played nightly, offering culture as an alternative to the crude entertainments of competing saloons—a development that greatly relieved his wife, Ida. The Long Branch became the most popular gathering place for the cattlemen of Dodge. The bar served everything from milk and sarsaparilla to fine champagne and Anheuser-Busch beer, the first to be served there.6 In a land of lukewarm whiskey, Beeson and Harris offered cold drinks year-round, hauling ice from the frozen Arkansas River in winter and, in an extravagant display of sophistication, shipping it by train from the mountains of Colorado in the summer.

This was the physical embodiment of the central conflict of Dodge City. The Long Branch was a place of high-stakes vice—poker pots could reach a thousand dollars—but it was presented with an air of class and order. The firm of Beeson & Harris grew into a "minor conglomerate," with holdings that included the sprawling C.O.D. Cattle Ranch and business interests as far away as Arizona. Beeson even organized the Dodge City Cowboy Band, a celebrated group that would one day perform at the inauguration of President Benjamin Harrison. Under Beeson and Harris, the Long Branch became a microcosm of the West's own progression, a precarious and elegant attempt to impose civilization upon a foundation of profitable chaos.

A Woman's Honor, A Gambler's Pride

On the evening of April 5, 1879, the refined atmosphere of Chalk Beeson’s saloon was about to be shattered by the most primal of conflicts. The dispute centered on two men who made their living at the gambling tables. The first was Frank Loving, a 19-year-old professional gambler from Missouri, known as "Cockeyed Frank" because of a slight misalignment of his eyes. He was new to Dodge, having arrived the previous year with his wife, Mattie. The second was Levi Richardson, a freighter from Wisconsin, a man with a "tough disposition" and a hot temper.

​The feud had been simmering for weeks. The cause was as old as time: a woman. Loving claimed that Richardson had made "unwanted and disrespectful advances" toward Mattie. The animosity had festered through verbal taunts until it erupted into a fistfight on Front Street in March. Richardson, bested in the exchange, had left Loving with a chilling promise: "I'll blow the guts out of you, you cockeyed son of a bitch".

That cold April evening, Richardson strode into the Long Branch, looking for a final resolution.  Loving was not there, so Richardson joined a poker game to wait. Around 9:00 p.m., Loving entered, armed this time. He took a seat at a long table, and Richardson moved to sit directly across from him. Witnesses heard them speaking in low, tense tones before Richardson’s voice rose in a public challenge. "You wouldn't fight anything, you damned son of a bitch," he snarled. Loving’s reply was calm, cold, and final. "Try me and see".

What followed was not the clean, stylized duel of later fiction, but a desperate, chaotic brawl with deadly consequences. Both men drew their revolvers and began firing at point-blank range. The room exploded with noise and thick, acrid clouds of black powder smoke. Richardson emptied his pistol, firing five shots; Loving fired six. They chased each other around a pot-bellied stove and a billiard table, their guns almost touching in the smoky gloom. Terrified patrons dove for cover; one man reportedly scrambled into an ice chest to escape the flying lead.

When the shooting stopped, the silence was as shocking as the noise had been. Levi Richardson lay on the floor, dying from three bullet wounds to his chest, side, and arm. Frank Loving, miraculously, had only a slight scratch on his hand. Town Marshal Charlie Bassett, who had run from a nearby saloon at the sound of the shots, arrested Loving as a matter of procedure. Two days later, a coroner's inquest ruled the killing was an act of self-defense, and Loving walked free. The local Ford County Globe expressed astonishment at the outcome, noting how strange it was that Loving was virtually untouched when the two men had been so close their pistols "almost touched each other". The gunfight at the Long Branch was a brutal lesson in the reality of frontier violence: it was not a contest of skill, but a frantic, clumsy, and terrifyingly intimate affair driven by pride and passion.

The Saloon War

By 1883, the currents of power in Dodge City were shifting. In February, Chalk Beeson, perhaps growing weary of the saloon business, sold his share of the Long Branch to Luke Short. Short was a man of small stature but immense reputation. A former army scout and professional gambler, he was known as a deadly gunfighter, having survived a famous shootout in Tombstone. His arrival marked a new, more volatile era for the Long Branch.

Larry Deger

The underlying tension between the town's "respectable" reformers and its freewheeling saloon interests was about to boil over into open warfare. The flashpoint was the mayoral election of March 1883. Luke Short’s partner, William H. Harris, ran for the office, representing the established saloon faction. He was opposed by Lawrence Deger, the candidate of a "law and order" ticket. Crucially, Deger was backed by the owner of the Alamo Saloon, the Long Branch's primary business rival. The election became a proxy battle for control of the town's lucrative vice economy. Deger won by a comfortable margin, 214 to 143, and his allies swept the city council seats.

The victors moved with ruthless speed. Deger's council immediately passed two new ordinances: one for "The Suppression of Vice and Immorality" and another targeting "Vagrancy". The language was moral, but the application was purely political. The laws were enforced selectively and exclusively against the Long Branch Saloon. On April 28, city marshals arrested three of the female singers employed at the Long Branch, while ignoring the prostitutes and dance hall girls at every other establishment in town. The Ford County Globe noted the proprietors’ claims of "partiality".

When a furious Luke Short went to protest this targeted harassment, he exchanged angry words and then harmless shots with a policeman, leading to his arrest.

The new administration had shown its hand. This was not a moral crusade; it was a political purge designed to cripple a business competitor. On April 30, Mayor Deger and his allies took the final step. They escorted Luke Short and five other gamblers to the train depot and forced them to leave Dodge City under threat of violence. The "Dodge City War" had begun.

​The Peace Commission

Luke Short was not a man to be run out of town. Exiled in Kansas City, he planned his return, marshalling forces that the Deger administration had fatally underestimated. He sent telegrams to his most formidable friends. One went to Bat Masterson in Denver, who promptly contacted Wyatt Earp. The legends were coming back to Dodge.

The news of their impending arrival sent a shockwave through Kansas and across the country. Earp, Masterson, Charlie Bassett, and a coterie of other noted gunmen converged on Dodge City, where they were promptly sworn in as deputy marshals by a sympathetic local constable. The city was suddenly an armed camp, with Deger's local police force facing a private army of the West's most famous gunfighters. National newspapers ran sensational dispatches, predicting a bloodbath on Front Street.

​But the Dodge City War would be won without a single shot fired in anger. The decisive battle was fought not with pistols, but on balance sheets. Mayor Deger's actions, culminating in a proclamation to close all gambling establishments, threatened to choke off the town's primary source of revenue just as the cattle season was reaching its peak. The prospect of Texas cattle herds arriving to a shuttered town sent panic through the city's economic stakeholders. The Santa Fe Railroad, which profited immensely from the cattle trade, and the Kansas Governor, George Glick, who had been petitioned by Short, brought immense pressure to bear on the Deger administration. Faced with economic ruin and a standoff against men whose reputations were lethal, the mayor and his council buckled.

​On June 9, 1883, the two factions met in a dance hall and negotiated a truce. The ordinances were rescinded, the saloons were reopened, and Luke Short’s rights were restored. The following day, June 10, the victors assembled for a formal photograph. The image, now one of the most iconic of the Old West, shows eight stone-faced men in suits and derby hats. It was immediately dubbed "The Dodge City Peace Commission". It is a portrait not of lawmen restoring order, but of power. Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson had won the war with their most potent weapon: their own legends. The mere threat of what they were capable of was enough to bring a city government to its knees.

Ashes and Endings

​The victory of the Peace Commission was, in many ways, the last great stand of the old Dodge City. The forces of change were gathering, and the era of the wide-open cowtown was drawing to a close. In 1885, a devastating fire swept through the wooden buildings of Front Street, and the Long Branch Saloon burned to the ground. It was never rebuilt. In a stroke of historical symmetry, that same year the Kansas legislature passed new quarantine laws that effectively banned the great Texas cattle drives, citing concerns over cattle diseases. The twin pillars of Dodge City’s wild reputation—its most famous saloon and its cowboy clientele—were gone.

​The victory of the Peace Commission was, in many ways, the last great stand of the old Dodge City. The forces of change were gathering, and the era of the wide-open cowtown was drawing to a close. In 1885, a devastating fire swept through the wooden buildings of Front Street, and the Long Branch Saloon burned to the ground. It was never rebuilt. In a stroke of historical symmetry, that same year the Kansas legislature passed new quarantine laws that effectively banned the great Texas cattle drives, citing concerns over cattle diseases. The twin pillars of Dodge City’s wild reputation—its most famous saloon and its cowboy clientele—were gone.

The Long Branch Reborn: Miss Kitty's Saloon

​The physical Long Branch was gone, but its name was destined for a resurrection more powerful than any of its founders could have imagined. Decades later, in the golden age of radio and then television, the name was plucked from history for a new Western drama: Gunsmoke. The series, which would run for an astonishing 20 seasons, was set in a fictionalized Dodge City and made the Long Branch Saloon its central social hub, the place where plots were hatched and destinies decided.

​The show's most significant and lasting invention was the saloon's proprietor, Miss Kitty Russell. Portrayed for 19 years by actress Amanda Blake, Miss Kitty was the fiery, independent, and sharp-witted heart of the show's Dodge City. She became one of the most beloved and iconic female characters in television history. She was also entirely a product of fiction. The historical Long Branch was owned and operated by a succession of men; no "Miss Kitty" ever presided over its bar.

The immense popularity of Gunsmoke ensured that its version of history would supplant the real one in the American imagination. For millions of viewers, the world of Marshal Matt Dillon, Doc Adams, and Miss Kitty was Dodge City. The show’s cultural gravity was so strong that it began to reshape the real world. In 1958, the actual city of Dodge, Kansas, in a public ceremony attended by the show's cast, officially renamed one of its downtown streets "Gunsmoke Street," cementing the bond between the historical town and its fictional counterpart.

​Walking Down Front Street Today

​To visit Dodge City today is to walk through a landscape where history and myth are inseparable. At the Boot Hill Museum, a reconstructed Front Street stands as a monument to the town's past. Here, a new Long Branch Saloon offers visitors a drink and a taste of the Old West. This building is a fascinating hybrid, a physical manifestation of the town's dual identity. The exterior was meticulously modeled on period photographs of the original 1874 structure, a faithful nod to historical accuracy.

​Step inside, however, and you enter a space shaped by Hollywood. The interior is not a replica of the original, but an homage "largely based on the Gunsmoke series". It is Miss Kitty's saloon, the cultural touchstone for generations of fans. Yet, within this fictionalized space, authentic history resides. The bar is an original, hand-carved piece from 1881. And atop the back bar sit two golden eagles, priceless artifacts that once belonged to Chalk Beeson himself.

​Step inside, however, and you enter a space shaped by Hollywood. The interior is not a replica of the original, but an homage "largely based on the Gunsmoke series". It is Miss Kitty's saloon, the cultural touchstone for generations of fans. Yet, within this fictionalized space, authentic history resides. The bar is an original, hand-carved piece from 1881. And atop the back bar sit two golden eagles, priceless artifacts that once belonged to Chalk Beeson himself.