Tombstone Deadwood Dodge City

<p>Shootin'-Lynchin'-Hangin' announces the advertisement for Tombstone's Helldorado Days festival. Dodge City's Boot Hill Cemetery sports an authentic hangman's tree. Not to be outdone Deadwood's Days of '76 celebration promises miners cowboys Indians cavalry bars dance halls and gambling dens.</p><p></p><p> The Wild West may be long gone but its legend lives on in Tombstone Arizona; Deadwood South Dakota; and Dodge City Kansas. In<em> Tombstone Deadwood and Dodge City</em> Kevin Britz and Roger L. Nichols conduct a tour of these iconic towns revealing how over time they became repositories of western America's defining myth. Beginning with the founding of the communities in the 1860s and 1870s this book traces the circumstances conversations and clashes that shaped the settlements over the course of a century.</p><p></p><p>Drawing extensively on literature newspapers magazines municipal reports political correspondence and films and television the authors show how Hollywood and popular novels as well as major historical events such as the Great Depression and both world wars shaped public memories of these three towns. Along the way Britz and Nichols document the forces-from business interests to political struggles-that influenced dreams and decisions in Tombstone Deadwood and Dodge City.</p><p></p><p>After the so-called rowdy times of the open frontier had passed town promoters tried to sell these towns by remaking their reputations as peaceful law-abiding communities. Hard times made boosters think again however and they turned back to their communities' rowdy pasts to sell the towns as exemplars of the western frontier.</p><p></p><p>An exploration of the changing times that led these towns to be marketed as reflections of the Old West <em>Tombstone Deadwood and Dodge City</em> opens an illuminating new perspective on the crafting and marketing of America's mythic self-image.</p><p></p>