Before she was Wichita, Kansas, she was a collection of grass huts, home to the ancestors of the Wichita Indians. Then came the Spanish conquistadors, seeking gold but finding instead vast herds of buffalo.

After the Civil War, Wichita played host to a cavalcade of Western men: frontier soldiers, Indian warriors, buffalo hunters, border ruffians, hell-for-leather Texas cattle drovers, ready-to-die gunslingers, and steel-eyed lawmen. Peerless Princess of the Plains, they called her.

Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Bat Masterson were here, but so were Jesse Chisholm, Jack Ledford, Rowdy Joe and Rowdy Kate, Buffalo Bill Mathewson, Marshall Mike Meagher, Indian trader James Mead, Oklahoma Harry Hill, city founder Dutch Bill Greiffenstein, and a host of colorful characters like you've never known before.

Stan Hoig depicts a once-rambunctious cowtown on the Chisholm Cattle Trail, neighbor to the lawless Indian Territory, roaring and bucking through its Wild West days toward becoming a major American city.

Cowtown Wichita and the Wild, Wicked West provides tribute to those sometimes valiant, sometimes wicked, sometimes hilarious, and often audacious characters who played a role in shaping Wichita's past.

The book is published by University of New Mexico Press.