Caldwell Chisholm Trail Festival
May 2-3, 2008
A Western movie would be far too polite to portray the likes of a Kansas cowtown. Caldwell of the past was home to gunslingers, cowboys, prostitutes, Indians, saloon keepers, and criminals. Life was hard on the trail and in the towns. Caldwell especially was rougher, tougher, and meaner in the vilest way.
The money-hungry businessmen of Wichita founded our great city by the opportunities that lie in this Border Queen City-the first stop north of Indian Territory. The shortage of beef in the northeast after the Civil War coupled with the five million head of Texas cattle with no railroads on which to ship began the era of the long cattle drive and the Kansas cowtowns.
Gambling, drinking, prostitution, and dance halls began to take its toll on numerous local marshals. No one could tame this town! Violence claimed sixteen marshals between 1879 and 1885 and led a Wichita editor to write, "As we go to press, hell is again in session in Caldwell." Cowboys were young-late teens to early twenties and single. Once said, a "cowboy" was "anyone with guts and a horse." Life on the trail was harsh and celebrating at the end of the trail was sometimes harsher. Whiskey, guns and ammunition were a recipe for calamity!
Though our rough and tumble town has given way to peaceful farmland and golden waves of wheat, we celebrate our birth as a cowtown with the annual Chisholm Trail Festival to be held May 2-3, 2008. Details will be coming soon!
