Beer City actually bore the more respectable name of White City at first, since it was roofed mostly in canvas, but Beer City was obviously a more appropriate title, and the name stuck. There was nothing much in Beer City but saloons and dance halls. It never had a church or a school or even a post office. During the cattle-shipping season, itinerant prostitutes traveled to Beer City from Dodge City and Wichita. Many of the girls who staffed Beer City’s houses commuted from Liberal, traveling between the two towns in the daily horse-drawn hack.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Predictably known as the ‘Sodom and Gomorrah of the Plains,’ Beer City knew no holidays, for its business was constant merriment. The entrepreneurs who ran the Elephant, the Yellow Snake and the other saloons advertised their town as the only place ‘in the civilized world where there is absolutely no law.’ They staged dances, horse races, boxing and wrestling matches, and Wild West shows to keep their customers amused between drinks. Some of them even furnished ‘drunk pens,’ wire enclosures in which a sodden cowboy could sleep it off without getting rolled for any money he had left.

The town had other kinds of entertainment, too, much of it unplanned and violent. There was, for example, the day on which Pussy Cat Nell, madam of the house above the Yellow Snake Saloon, ushered town marshal Lew Bush into the next world with her shotgun. The cause of their falling out is not recorded, but there is no evidence that Pussy Cat Nell’s impulsive act was regarded as worthy of censure. Besides, she ran an essential service, and Marshal Bush had been rustling on the side.

Since Beer City and its competitors were a very long way from any kind of real distillery, and since cowboys seldom cared much what sort of booze they drank, the liquor supply, such as it was, tended to come from local sources. Thus the making of white lightning became a favorite — and semirespectable — occupation for a good many residents of No Man’s Land.

In addition to the little stills, producing more or less poisonous rotgut, there were several serious distilleries. One was run out of a cave covered by a lean-to soddy on Hog Creek, near Gate City, and operated night and day. Another, down on Clearwater Creek south of Beaver, produced a couple of barrels of ‘good whiskey’ each week. The best-known still was run by the man who would appear in 1888 as the first attorney general of an illusory Cimarron Territory. This still even boasted an expert distiller, imported from Kentucky, where folks were supposed to know about these things. Another artist boiled dried peaches and added the juice to his moonshine, producing what was described as ‘a beautiful, amber-colored and fancy-flavored drink.’

In time, enthusiastic residents of No Man’s Land formed a provisional government, as they called it. They had a great seal made and used it to fire off petitions to Washington, D.C., for territorial status. They grandly called their new land Cimarron Territory, in fact, in the forlorn hope that the name and their activity would move the Congress to favorably consider their ambitions. They sent a couple of competing representatives to Washington, too, and even found some allies in Congress, but the area would remain an orphan until the Oklahoma Organic Act of 1890 made it part of brand-new Oklahoma Territory.

That great day came too late for many residents of No Man’s Land, for the living was lonely and farming was a hardscrabble life. Wheat prices were not high enough to make much money, and the nearest railheads were still up in Kansas. There was a severe drought in 1888, and as a last straw the supply of beef and buffalo bones was nearly exhausted, and so too were buffalo and cow chips, the staple fuel. A mournful nester jingle went:

Pickin’ up bones to keep from starving, Pickin’ up chips to keep from freezing, Pickin’ up courage to keep from leaving, Way out West in No Man’s Land.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to