William Matthew Tilghman was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and soon moved to Atchison, Kansas. As a young man he was a buffalo hunter and a scout for the U.S. Army, and his skill as a marksman led him into law enforcement as marshal of Dodge City, Kansas. He was appointed Deputy United States Marshal in 1891, and his service continued for 35 years. On September 22, 1891, he joined the Oklahoma Territory Land Run for former Sac and Fox Indian lands and staked a claim near what would become Chandler. He also served as sheriff of Lincoln County, police chief of Oklahoma City, and an Oklahoma state senator. Historian William Raines said that Tilghman took a thousand chances, made more arrests of dangerous men, broke up more outlaw gangs, and sent more criminals to prison than any individual officer on the frontier, and that none of the fabled lawmen of Western myth, including Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, or Bill Hickok, came close to matching his record. Called out of retirement at age 70 to return to duty, Tilghman was killed in Cromwell, Oklahoma, in 1924. Bat Masterson said, "He was the greatest of us all."