FOREWORD
Dodge City, Kansas, founded in 1872 when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad reached a point located five miles west of Fort Dodge, was a wide open, raucous, frontier town that catered first to the Buffalo hunters from 1872 through 1875. Following the demise of the Buffalo trade, the City Fathers went South to entice the Texas ranchers to bring their longhorn cattle to Dodge City where they would receive top prices for their beef. It was during this period, from 1875 until 1885, that Dodge City enjoyed the dubious distinction as the “Queen of the Cowtowns.”
During this reign, Dodge City, also known as the “wickedest little city in America,” was the scene of many famous and some infamous incidents, that would forever pique the interest of writers and create lasting legends of some of the real people who resided here. The year 1878 provided all of the right stuff that would put Dodge City on the map as a wild and wooly cowtown and helped establish its permanent place in the annals of those bygone days.
It was during that year, four young and fearless men in their 20’s and early 30’s, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman and Charlie Basset among others, were hired to uphold the law; James “Dog” Kelley was elected Mayor; Marshal Ed Masterson, Bat’s Brother, was shot and killed in the line of duty by an unruly cowboy; J. H. “Doc” Holiday, dentist, office in room 24 of the Dodge House, offered his services with “money refunded if not satisfied, ” his ad promised; Assistant U. S. Deputy Marshal Henry T. McCarty was shot and killed in the Long Branch Saloon; Dull Knife and his band of 340 Cheyenne jumped the reservation at Fort Reno and fled north through western Kansas to their North Dakota homeland; Colonel William H. Lewis, commander at Fort Dodge, was killed in a battle while pursuing the Cheyenne in northwestern Kansas; and a beautiful singer/entertainer, Dora Hand was foully murdered by a young cattle baron who was smitten by her charms.
This book, Thunder Over the Plains, by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss, is a masterful job relating the murder of Dora Hand and the subsequent action taken by these four young lawmen to pursue and capture her killer. The authors have done an excellent job in presenting these men as real people who were very good at doing their job not just the mythical icons of the “Old West” that they would later become.
A local historian, Fredric R. Young, in his book, Dodge City Up Through A Century in Story and Pictures, states, “ Much nonsense has been written about Dodge City’s Queen of the Fairy Belles, Dora Hand, but her romantic and novel history is yet to be fully unraveled.”
It is my humble opinion that one hundred and forty years after her death, this gripping and suspenseful book is a beautiful unraveling of her romantic and novel history.
Jim Sherer, Director (Retired)
Kansas Heritage Center & Former Mayor of Dodge City, Kansas
