Abilene, Kansas, part 6

Wild Bill's term as marshal of Abilene, Kansas ended on December 13, 1871. At that time, the town folks decided not to invite the Texans and their cows back for any more visits, thus alleviating the necessity for such an expensive law enforcer. It was well they did because the booming time of the cattle drives to the Kansas railheads would forcible and legally come to a close.

Regulations regarding the movement of longhorn cattle began creating a boom or bust situation in Kansas cattle towns. Even prior to regulations being passed there had been trouble between the cowmen and the farmers. Farmers fenced in their land. Cowmen needed open range to move, feed, and water their stock while on a drive. There was another serious problem as well. Soon after the Civil War when folks started settling on the Kansas plains with the intentions of farming they discovered that the longhorns coming through to the railheads carried a microscopic tick.

The Texas animals were immune to this parasite. This was not so for the local cattle. This same tick produced, in the local cattle, a deadly splenic fever. To regulate the problem, in 1869, the Kansas legislature set up a quarantine line that ran somewhat north-south. It was meant to put a limit on longhorn drives to the western portion of Kansas. That portion of the state was mostly unsettled country. But year after year more homesteaders moved in and commenced farming, filling up the empty spaces. In response the quarantine line was gradually moved westward and southward to protect the domestic cattle from the tick.

The end came gradually, but it did come. First Abilene was closed off behind the quarantine line. Gradually, in Kansas, Ellsworth, Wichita and Ellis followed.

Times were considerably calmer now in Abilene as the turn of the century approached. But the town would, in the future, have one more claim to fame.

On October 14, 1890, a baby boy was born in Denison, Texas. He was named Dwight. When he was about two years old his parents, David and Ida Elizabeth Eisenhower moved their family to Abilene, Kansas. The little boy went to school in Abilene, and grew up there with his brothers Arthur, Edgar, Roy, Earl, and Milton on the old homestead that belonged to their grandfather Jacob Eisenhower. The boy 'Ike' as friends and family called him, graduated from Abilene High School in 1909. Later, in 1915, he graduated from West Point, ranking 61 in a class of 168 students. Upon graduation he was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry. He experienced a brilliant and successful military career, which included becoming the first head of the armies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

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