Hays: From Thirty-Seven Saloons to Cathedral Country

Hays, Kansas, grew up alongside Fort Hays in eighteen sixty-seven as a civilian satellite to the military post and a supply stop for the Union Pacific Railroad pushing west. At its roughest, the town had thirty-seven saloons and dance halls and recorded about thirty homicides in six years, earning a reputation as one of the most violent places on the Kansas frontier. Wild Bill Hickok served briefly as sheriff of Ellis County.

The violence faded as the railroad moved on and the Army's role diminished. What transformed Hays into the city it is today was immigration. Beginning in eighteen seventy-six, thousands of Volga German Catholic families, displaced from their century-old settlements along Russia's Volga River, flooded into Ellis County. They built farms, founded villages, and eventually constructed the Cathedral of the Plains at nearby Victoria. Today Fort Hays State University anchors the city, and Hays serves as the commercial hub for western Kansas.