Caldwell, founded in 1871 and incorporated in 1879 by a town company of investors from Wichita, was named for U. S. Sen. Alexander Caldwell. Its original townsite lay north of Avenue F, the Kansas state line before 1876. As one of Kansas's original cowtowns, it became known for violence and politics that claimed 16 city marshals between 1879 and 1885, prompting a Wichita editor to write, "As we go to press hell is again in session in Caldwell." Founded on the Chisholm Trail, which ran just east in a northerly direction and was 200 to 400 yards wide, Caldwell served as a railroad shipping point for Texas longhorn cattle until cattle shipping moved west by 1886 as farmers settled the area and planted Russian hard winter wheat. In 1893, after Congress opened the Cherokee Outlet to settlement, thousands of pioneers gathered there before the last great land rush in America. Caldwell's earlier years included gunslingers, cowboys, prostitutes, Indians, saloon keepers, and criminals, while the community later became a proud, quiet farming town. On this site, lots first sold in 1879 for $125, and by 1887 a $45,000 three-story building of Caldwell brick, Saint Louis brick fronts, and blue cut limestone accents stood 75 feet tall as the highest private building in Sumner County. Its first floor held four stores, its second floor offices, and its third floor the Masonic lodge. Later known as the J. C. Penney store, it housed many professionals, businesses, and families over 102 years before being demolished in 1989. Catty-corner to the northwest stood the Leland, a legendary 1883 cattlemen's hotel, and a tunnel beneath Main Street connected the two as an escape route for gamblers when law enforcement objected to their illegal activities, though such objections were rare in booming cowtown Caldwell in the 1880s.