True West Magazine
The once wild and woolly cowtown still celebrates its Old West heritage.
The arrival of the railroad in 1872 transformed this trading post settlement on the Arkansas River into a cowtown, a destination for cattle driven north on the Chisholm Trail.
The Texas drovers brought trouble, and trouble brought a young lawman named Wyatt Earp. He did fine work until his temper won out and he used his fists to beat the socks off a candidate for city marshal.
Founded in 1868 near the confluence of the Little Arkansas and Arkansas rivers, the frontier outpost of Wichita quickly became a trailhead for Texas cattlemen and their herds of longhorns when the AT&SF Railroad arrived in 1872.