Railroads & Cattle Trails

It is obvious that the railroad quickly became essential to the survival of the small rural towns. 

Those towns that were bypassed by the railroads, some of which were flourishing initially, soon dwindled and died out. The first trains came into Scott City in 1885.

Among the first businesses in the early towns, the blacksmith shop was important not only to farmers and  cattlemen, but even to the housewives, who depended on the blacksmith to make household tools.