Baxter Springs

Few towms in the Ozarks have a richer history than Baxter Springs. (I consider Baxter Springs in the Ozarks, although admittedly it's right at the western edge.) The town is famous on at least three separate counts.
First it is well known as the site of Quantrill's battle and massacre there in October of 1863. After attacking Fort Blair, which was still under construction at the time, and being repelled, Quantrill attacked and annihilated a Union wagon train under General James Blunt that was on its way into the fort, leaving over ninety bodies strewn about the field.
Baxter is also famous for being the first cow town in Kansas. During the years immediately after the Civil War, before the railroad reached towns farther west like Abilene and Wichita, Baxter Springs was the main destination for herds of longhorns driven through Indian Territory from Texas to Kansas. After the long journey along the Shawnee Trail, the cattle would usually lay over in Baxter before being herded (later shipped) on to their final destination. Part of the reason for Baxter's rise as a cattle town was the fact that Kansas had laws that allowed the Texas longhorns to enter the state only during specified months, and the cattle would lay over in Baxter, which at the time was located south of the state line in the Cherokee Neutral Lands, while awaiting passage. Although Baxter's life as a rowdy cow town was short lived, for a while it roared just as loudly as its successors farther west. Larry O'Neal of the Baxter Springs Heritage Center and Museum told me yesterday that the only thing the other towns had that Baxter lacked was a famous marshal like Wyatt Earp. I reminded him that probably part of the reason Baxter lacked a famous lawman was because two of the town's early marshals were killed in the line of duty. I find it a little ironic that perhaps the only reason they didn't become famous was that they didn't live long enough to embellish their stories the way Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok did.
Baxter declined for a time during the late 1800s after its hurrah as a cow town, but it revived in the early part of the twentieth century during the tri-state district's lead mining days and once again became a booming town for awhile.
Baxter has a few other minor claims to fame, too, such as being the hometown of golfer Hale Irwin, but the first three are the main ones.
By the way, Treble Heart Books has just released my new historical novel, entitled Showdown at Baxter Springs, that is based on the town's heyday as booming cow town. As far as I know, it's the only western ever set in early-day Baxter Springs. For anybody who's interested, you can order the book directly from the publisher at http://www.trebleheartbooks.com/SDLarryWood.html.

Wyatt Earp

Many people, when they think of the Old West, automatically think of places farther west than Missouri--places like Dodge City, Kansas; Tombstone, Arizona; and Virginia City, Nevada. Actually, though, there was period of time immediately after the Civil War when the Ozarks region was the Old West.
For instance, Wild Bill Hickok's shootout with Davis Tutt immediately after the Civil War on the square in Springfield is widely considered the first gunfight of the Old West era. And, as I've mentioned in previous posts, the lead-mining town of Granby, Missouri, was one of the wildest and most lawless towns in America in the years leading up to and immediately following the Civil War. Then there was Baxter Springs, Kansas, at the edge of the Ozarks, which lays claim to the title of "First Cow Town in Kansas."
Another example is the fact that Wyatt Earp; who, of course, went on to Wild West fame as a lawman in places like Wichita, Dodge City, and especially Tombstone; got his start as as a lawman when he was hired as the constable of Lamar, Missouri, in the fall of 1869. Earp left Lamar, though, about a year later under a cloud of suspicion, and he was subsequently sued twice in Barton County, once over an allegation that he had failed to turn over public funds that he had collected while serving as constable and a second time over a charge that he had falsified court documents. In fact, although dime novels, movies, and TV made Wyatt Earp into a hero and a romantic legend of the Old West, a cloud of controversy or suspicion hovered over much of his whole career. The point at hand, though, is that it all started here in the Ozarks, America's first Wild West.

Bud Blunt

The last but not the least of the Granby (Missouri) desperadoes was Allen "Bud" Blunt (also spelled "Blount"). Bud was born around 1850 at Poplar Bluff (Mo.) in Butler County and moved with his family, including three brothers and two sisters, to Granby in the early 1860s. Although he was involved in a scrape in late 1873 when his pal John Cole was shot and killed on the streets of Granby (see my previous post on Hobbs Kerry), Bud, like a lot of outlaws, seemingly started off on the right side of the law, running for city marshal of Granby in 1874 as the candidate of the Workingman's Party. In 1877, though, he and a gang that included George Hudson and Bud's older brother, John, galloped into the nearby town of Webb City and shot up the place, wounding a couple of innocent bystanders, because a friend of theirs had been incarcerated there for public drunkenness. Shortly after this incident, Hudson and the Blunts moved to Colorado, where Hudson and Bud Blunt assaulted and robbed one man and, according to Blunt's own later testimony, killed another near Leadville. Around 1880, the Blunts ambled into Arizona Territory, where Bud got beat up by a man named McDonald at the mining camp of Tip Top and killed the man in retaliation. He was sentenced to the territorial prison for the crime, but Wyatt Earp, who knew the Blunt boys, intervened on Bud's behalf and helped get him released after a couple of years. Bud returned to his home territory after his release but couldn't stay out of trouble. He was arrested for stealing horses (one report says mules) and sentenced to the Kansas Penitentiary. Released around 1890, he boarded an eastbound train in Granby later that year and, near Ritchey, killed a brakeman who was trying to remove him to the smoking car because of his drunken behavior. Acting quickly, the conductor shoved the killer off the train, and Blunt was found later the same day in a ditch near where he was kicked off, having drunk himself into a stupor. He was arrested, convicted of first degree murder, and sentenced to hang. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison, and Blunt was pardoned around 1900.
As I've chronicled during the past couple of weeks, Granby had at least five desperate characters who not only were associated with the town during the post-Civil War era but who lived there during most of their youth and early manhood, and this number does not include brothers and other sidekicks of the notorious quintet. If another town of comparable size produced as many infamous characters during America's Wild West era as Granby, I don't know what that town would be.