South Dodge, A Vacated Ford County Town

In a previous post, I talked about the beginning of the South Dodge Town Company and the fraudster, Perry Wilden. It didn’t take long for “South Dodge” to mean anything south of the Arkansas River. Crawford’s Addition, for example, is just south of the river and it was said to be in South Dodge. Same with the new Rock Island Depot. In this installment, I’ll be sticking to the original South Dodge townsite and the newer Park Addition.

Things were already starting to get blurry by 1887 when South Dodge was attached to Dodge City for school and legal purposes.

As mentioned previously, D. F. and Ella Owens purchased the South Dodge townsite and began marketing the lots.

And this is where the Owens and Beeson families did their little real estate switcheroo.

This 1887 map from the David Rumsey Map Collection shows the new Park Addition west of the original South Dodge site. The county road running east and west is now Beeson Road. You can click on the image to view the full map.

Chalk and Ida immediately petitioned to vacate the entire Park Addition. The home they purchased was located at the southeast corner of what is now Beeson Road and 14th Avenue and this would allow them to maintain the acreage as farmland.

There was a bit of a boom in South Dodge around this time but the newspapers reported people were waiting to build until the street railway was operational. It appears they were also waiting to pay their taxes.

By September of 1887, the street railway system hadn’t yet materialized but it hadn’t been forgotten.

This is the house the Owens family traded to my great-great grandparents. D. F. Owens was the Editor and Publisher of The Dodge City Times when these ads were running.

Finally an explanation about the street railway company! It was doomed from the beginning.

In November of 1889, Chalk and Ida tried a second time to have the streets and alleyways of the Park Addition vacated. This petition was granted in January of 1890. A few months later, Ham Bell established a county poor house at the old Wilden farm.

The South Dodge Town Company still owned some lots in August of 1890.

Although most town lots had been sold, there weren’t enough residents and businesses to meet the state requirements. The townsite of South Dodge was vacated by an Act of the Kansas Legislature in March of 1895.

Over time, Chalk bought up the parcels as property taxes became delinquent and lots went into foreclosure. Rather than being listed in South Dodge, they were considered part of Richland Township. This is how the map looked in 1905.

You can see that all of Section 2 was owned by Ida and Merritt Beeson by 1916.

The 1932 Sanborn shows the southern city boundary was at Sycamore Street with a small part of Sunnyside included. Beeson Road was Highway 45 and it was in the county at that time.

You’ll also notice that Sunnyside no longer went diagonally to the southwest all the way to Beeson Road. By 1932, it had been reoriented to run straight south where the current curve is south of Market Street.

From a business standpoint, there wasn’t much to tell for many years because Merritt held onto the land after he inherited it from Ida. He gave a large chunk to Betty and she and Red had it subdivided.

The Chalk Beeson Addition was platted in 1947 but it was mostly residential. This addition was replatted several times to add streets and lots for commercial buildings.

Betty’s husband, Red Miller, had the Miller Subdivision No. 1 platted in 1965.

And then, after the great tragedy occurred, the north end of the old South Dodge townsite was replatted again.

The Ford County Subdivision map still says South Dodge but the designation has shifted to the northeast.

How does that translate to the current neighborhood? I marked the areas in red boxes on the Ford County GIS Map below. I may be off a bit on the dividing line between South Dodge and Park Addition but the outside boundaries are correct.

So if any of you remember before the South High Rise was built, the road from Merritt’s house went straight south across McArtor Road toward Red Miller’s house. That was the supply road that went south of town and THAT was Supply Avenue.

I remember hearing people talk about South Dodge becoming a separate municipality when I was a kid. Since the residents of South Dodge were treated like they weren’t part of Dodge City, they would just secede from the City and organize one of their own! Little did I know that we had already been there and done that.

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