Author Description

In the nineteenth century, Dodge City was arguably America's leading cattle town, and Robert M. Wright was indisputably Dodge City's leading merchant. C. Robert Haywood's Merchant Prince of Dodge City demonstrates that the city's rise and fall paralleled Wright's rapid ascent to power and abrupt decline. After working as a bull whacker on wagon trains traveling the Santa Fe Trail, Wright began a series of businesses that helped establish Dodge City and nurtured its development as a crucial link in the Texas-Kansas cattle business. When the end of the trail-driving industry was imminent, Wright refused to acknowledge the evidence, was overexpanded, and was caught in the depression of the 1890s. Dodge City plunged into an economic slump that lasted more than a decade. As the town moved into a new era, its populace downplayed the gaudy (if prosperous) past, and with it Wright was largely forgotten.