Flying into Dodge City, Kansas from the west, the first thing I notice from the air is how flat it is.

Cropland stretches all the way to the horizon in alternating squares of green and brown.

This is farm country.

And also cattle country.

Walking down the ramp to the One Gate Airport,

visitors are greeted with a sign,

Cowboy Capital of the West.

Gunslingers Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday spent time here during the cattle drive boom of the 1870s.

If you ever saw the TV show Gunsmoke?

You take Bulo, and you take the rest of your men, and you get out of Dodge.

Yep, this is the town where that phrase comes from.

When I walk into the visitor's center to get my bearings, old episodes are playing on a TV screen.

So what are the cupcakes for?

Today is the 70th anniversary of Gunsmoke, so we are helping celebrate the anniversary of Gunsmoke.

You've got to be kidding.

I can't believe I timed it so well.

Wow.

What brought me to town, though, is another aspect of Dodge City lore,

and I find it right next to a bronze Wyatt Earp statue on a busy street corner.

Okay.

I'm at a sign that says,

the 100th Meridian, where East meets West. The 100th Meridian. It's the invisible, longitudinal line that runs from pole to pole and cuts through the Great Plains.

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