The Dodge City War and the Peace Commission
Near Dodge City, Kansas
In the spring of eighteen eighty-three, a dispute over a saloon escalated into the most famous bloodless confrontation in the history of the West. A gambler named Luke Short had bought an interest in a Dodge City saloon, and the city's mayor, leading an effort to clean up the gambling district, arranged to have Short's employees arrested and Short himself escorted to the train depot at gunpoint and given his choice of east or westbound trains. Short did not accept this quietly.
He contacted his friends, who were among the most dangerous men in the West. Bat Masterson joined Short in Kansas City. A message went to Wyatt Earp, who arrived with his wife and several associates.
Within days, a group of eight gunfighters had assembled in Dodge City and been deputized by a local constable. The mayor looked at the men across from him and decided that the gambling halls should reopen after all. On the tenth of June, eighteen eighty-three, the eight men gathered and posed for a photograph on a Dodge City street.
The photographer or someone in the group called them the Dodge City Peace Commission. The eight men in the image, Earp, Masterson, Short, and five others, became one of the most reproduced photographs of the frontier era. Not a shot was fired in the whole affair.
The standoff lasted about six weeks. Short returned to his saloon. The legend of the Peace Commission outlasted almost everyone in the photograph.
