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Description of  Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City: Re-creating the Frontier West

ShootinLynchinHangin, announces the advertisement for Tombstones Helldorado Days festival. Dodge Citys Boot Hill Cemetery sports an authentic hangmans tree. Not to be outdone, Deadwoods Days of 76 celebration promises miners, cowboys, Indians, cavalry, bars, dance halls and gambling dens. The Wild West may be long gone, but its legend lives on in Tombstone, Arizona Deadwood, South Dakota and Dodge City, Kansas. In Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City, Kevin Britz and Roger L. Nichols conduct a tour of these iconic towns, revealing how over time they became repositories of western Americas 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. 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 forcesfrom business interests to political strugglesthat influenced dreams and decisions in Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City. 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. An exploration of the changing times that led these towns to be marketed as reflections of the Old West, Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City opens an illuminating new perspective on the crafting and marketing of Americas mythic self-image.