Cattle drives, the Wizard of Oz, and Coronado's 1541 expedition — across the High Plains
Western Kansas's wildest century. KDDC Dodge City Regional sits on the railhead that ended the Western Trail — for thirteen years (1872–1885), every Texas longhorn drive terminated here, and Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday all wore badges in town. Boot Hill Cemetery on the south rise of downtown holds the original gunfight casualties; the Boot Hill Museum's recreated Front Street still runs daily Long Branch Saloon gunfight reenactments. Sixty nautical miles southwest to KLBL Liberal: in 1978 a local insurance agent claimed Liberal as Dorothy Gale's hometown — never specified in Baum's books — and got the governor to make it official. The actual 1939 MGM model house used in the tornado scene is in the museum. Liberal also hosts the Mid-America Air Museum (300+ aircraft) on the north edge of the field. East-northeast to KGCK Garden City: the Lee Richardson Zoo, the windbreak experiments of the post-Dust Bowl recovery, and the High Plains feedlot landscape. Three airports across the country's harshest agricultural geography.