Ellsworth was platted in the spring of 1867 2 miles west of Fort Harker, the projected supply post for the Army’s new military plan on the plains.

One year before, the Kansas City & Santa Fe Stage Company established a station near a spring on the Butterfield stage road. The location was about a half-mile north of the Smoky Hill River.

The town had barely begun in the spring of 1867 when a raging flood inundated it, followed by a cholera epidemic. The citizens who survived the horror of the deadly disease moved the town to higher ground, about a mile west. With the move, the Kansas City & Santa Fe Stage Company relocated their station to Ellsworth to take advantage of the town’s superior river crossing.

When the stage company moved out of the original location, Charley and Frank Johnson moved in.

The Johnson brothers, recently of Leavenworth, had a reputation as bad men. The saloon they established soon confirmed the accuracy of the reputation. The old stage station became a hangout for the worst kind of men. The place was approximately halfway between Fort Harker and Ellsworth’s new location, and became known as the Halfway House.

Teamsters were coming and going from Fort Harker on a regular basis.

When not hauling supplies for the Army, the Halfway House was the first place to visit west of the fort. Troops were in the field skirmishing with the Cheyenne along the Smoky Hill Trail. The campaign often led them into uncharted territory north of the trail, and when not in the field, the isolated saloon offered a much-needed distraction for a soldier on leave.

Col. James Albert Hadley, a young recruit at the time, recalled in the Feb. 7, 1903, edition of the Topeka Kansas State Journal that the Halfway House was “a rough uncouth place.” According to contemporary newspaper reports, Frank Johnson settled an argument with John Hancock by beating him with the butt of his pistol in early September 1867.

Hancock’s name actually differed with each account. The name of Hancock will do as good as any. After a thorough beating, Hancock was taken away from the Halfway House in a nearly senseless condition and ultimately humiliated.

According to Col.

Haley, the man Johnson battered was a wagon master. Wagon masters readily led men across the prairie with trains of heavy freight wagons.

Each wagon was pulled by a dozen oxen yoked together in pairs and urged forward by rough men. A man in Hancock’s position demanded respect. The beating taken from Johnson was something a wagon master could not tolerate.

Everyone knew the next meeting between the two men would mean the death of one, or both, of them.

On the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 11, 1867, Frank Johnson was at Ellsworth in Clara Grant’s brothel/dance hall. Col. Hadley described the scene.

The place was crowded. Dancers filled the floor.

Men stood shoulder-toshoulder, surrounding the gaming tables. Pushing through the crowd, Johnson nudged toward the front of the hall.

“He had cleared the dancers and was approaching the door when Hancock entered.

Both stopped suddenly about 10 feet apart.”

A few of the celebrants saw that a suicide duel was about to take place and took cover.

As quick a thought, two pistols were drawn.

Johnson’s six-shooter flashed first, but the sound of both weapons reverberated as “one prolonged report.” Panic spread through the crowd. Powder flashed and black smoke filled the air.

“At the third round of shots, Hancock began to sink. His shots slowed but came regularly until he was but a heap on the floor.”

He would never rise again. Hancock’s nemesis, Frank Johnson, stood erect throughout the gunfight. With the first shots, his freshly laundered white shirt showed crimson. On the third shot, as Hancock fell to the floor, blood completely soaked the front of Johnson’s shirt. The last shots died away as Johnson turned toward the door and staggered. With “a stream of frothy blood flowing from mouth and nostrils,” friends rushed in to support and guide him through the door.

Next door, at the Marshall House Hotel, five bullet wounds were found in his breast. One had passed through a lung. It was a death sentence. Johnson died around 2 o’clock the next afternoon.

Frankly, there had been so much violence in Ellsworth, the newspapers found it hard to keep up with the daily carnage. Dangerously wounded in the melee were two unnamed men and a woman by the name of Louisa McLain.

According to the Sept. 18 Louisville, Kan., Pottawatomie Gazette, “After the excitement had subsided, some misguided persons set fire to the house and burned it down. A Mexican was also shot in the street, making a total of five (actually six) in one night, a little more than the average number for Ellsworth, and almost entitling her to rank with Julesburg (Neb.).”

As an end-of-track town on the Union Pacific line Julesburg was gaining a reputation as the “Wickedest Town in the West.” Recent events like the suicide duel in Clara Grant’s dance hall were a pretty good argument that Ellsworth was well on the way to the kind of ranking few towns cared to have, on The Way West.

Next week, panic among thieves