What to See in Dodge City - Top Sights and Attractions

Arena. The United Wireless Arena is a multi-purpose venue in Dodge City, Kansas. The arena sits adjacent to the Boot Hill Casino and is connected to the Boot Hill Casino & Resort Conference Center. The United Wireless Arena and the Boot Hill Casino & Resort Conference Center are both managed by VenuWorks.

It was originally known as the "Dodge City/Ford County Events Center" before United Wireless purchased the naming rights to the facility in 2010.

The conference center is one large space that can be subdivided into six separate areas. The arena has a seating capacity of 5,300 spectators.

The arena became home to the Dodge City Law of the Champions Indoor Football league from 2014 until 2017. The Law were resurrected for the 2021 season after the Oklahoma Flying Aces withdrew one week before the season start by using the Flying Aces roster and staff. The CIF then granted an expansion team to Dodge City for the following season called the Southwest Kansas Storm. The arena hosts sporting events along with music concerts, comedians, beauty pageants, other traveling events.

Every winter, United Wireless Arena freezes the arena floor for public ice skating and for local hockey leagues to practice on. It takes over 10,000 gallons of water to create one-inch of ice and over four days of full-time labor for four people to install the ice. The subfloor is lowered to 16 degrees and the air temperature is below 58 degrees to maintain the ice floor.^[2]

The Glen Mitchell House, also known as Mitchell House, was a unique design in Dodge City at the time it was built, as it was modeled using Asian influences which were considerably different from the surrounding conventionally styled homes. The home in the Organic Architecture style was designed by architect Bruce Goff when Goff was practicing architecture in Kansas from 1964–1968 and built by Don Stein and Leo Jantz both of Dodge City, Kansas, United States. The house located at 1905 Burr Parkway, Dodge City, Kansas was designed in 1968 for Dr. Glen Mitchell, a practicing dentist and accomplished musician, and with the use of colors, textures and natural materials and landscaping the architect achieved a home that was in "harmony with its landscape".

The Glen Mitchell house has angular geometry and a large sloping wood shingle roof. Bruce Wrightsman, an architect of the Kansas State Historical Society, wrote that Goff's houses often had "large overhangs with thin eaves set over a large expanse of glass, giving the roof a sense of lightness," and noted that the Mitchell House's roof in particular "swooped upward, giving the roof the sense of flight as it floated over clerestory glass bringing in natural light to the open space." He also commented that colored glass is incorporated in the walls to create unique lighting characteristics and strengthen the organic expression of the home.

Professor Arn Henderson, of the University of Oklahoma, found Goff to be " an American genius" in a 2000 review of his works. But Henderson considered the Glen Mitchell House in Kansas to be "uninspired", and complained that the house "with a monochromatic cladding of wood shakes lacked both delicacy and the visual contrast that characterized much of his work." However, on reading Goff speak of his own theories of Music and Architecture in the Philip Welch edited collection of Goff's conversations and lectures one could surmise that this is a classic example of an architectural composition on a unique site with music as its inspiration and the monochromatic characteristics are part of the unique composition on a unique site.^[3]

The Long Branch Variety Show is a western saloon show presented in the Long Branch Saloon located at Boot Hill Museum, a non-profit entertainment and museum theme park, in Dodge City, Kansas.

The exterior of the new Long Branch Saloon was built in 1958 and modeled on period photographs of the original Long Branch Saloon building, which burned down in 1885 and was not rebuilt. The interior is largely based on the Gunsmoke television show and is consistent with period saloons of the era. It is furnished with an 1881 bar and two Golden Eagles on top of the back bar that were once owned by Chalkley Beeson.

It features actors portraying characters including Miss Kitty, the "Queen of Dodge City" and Chalkley Beeson, the saloon owner. The show was initially presented during the summer of 1958 as a temporary offering over the 4th of July holiday. The show proved so popular that it was continued. It has been presented seven nights a week during the summer months since then, making it one of the longest running seasonal shows of its type in the nation.^[7]