Abstract
IN THE THIRD WEEK OF JUNE 1882, seven Texas cowboys from an outfit grazing cattle on Duck Creek in southwest Kansas set out for nearby Dodge City. Like hundreds of cowhands and cattlemen before them, these Circle Dot men intended to see the elephant. Originally referring to the main attraction of any mid-nineteenth-century circus, the elephant reference was strictly metaphorical, meaning a unique sight or spectacle.1 Here it specifically alluded to the gaudy entertainments of one of the most notorious towns in America. Famous from coast to coast as a major western livestock market, Dodge City was equally celebrated and widely condemned for its all-night bars, gaming tables, dance halls, brothels, and general civic irregularity-all seasoned by the town's highly overblown reputation for gun violence.2 In the 1870s and 1880s, seemingly every cowboy ascending the Western Trail felt obliged to stop and ogle the excitement, if not actually participate in it.3
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