Fort Dodge (US Army Post) was located along the Santa Fe Trail.
The citizens of Dodge City worked to have a soldiers' home established on the old post.
In 1889 President Grover Cleveland signed a bill allowing part of the military reservation to be used as a soldiers' home.
Even croquet had to be adandoned as a form of recreation when the mallets proved to be to [sic] handy a weapon to settled quarrels among the oldsters.
A cemetery was established to inter residents who died and needed a place to be buried.