Biohazard Cleanup Near North Cimarron Cimarron, KS

Cimarron is a city in and the county seat of Gray County in southwestern Kansas, located along U.S. Highway 50 about 20 miles west of Dodge City.

Cimarron was first settled in 1878 at the Cimarron Crossing of the Arkansas River, and it took its name from the fork in the Santa Fe Trail that led travelers southwest toward the Cimarron River.

The crossing at Cimarron was the starting point of the Cimarron Cutoff, the shorter but drier and more dangerous route to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Cimarron was incorporated in 1885, and its first mayor was John K. Hopper.

Between 1887 and 1893, Gray County fought a county seat war involving famed Old West lawmen Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman and Ben Daniels, and Cimarron emerged as the permanent county seat.

On June 10, 1893, outlaw Bill Doolin and four members of his gang robbed a train just a half-mile east of Cimarron.

The 2020 census counted 1,981 people in Cimarron, living in 745 households, and the city is the largest community in Gray County, which had 5,653 residents in 2020.

Gray County was named after Alfred Gray, a 19th-century Kansas politician, and it remains a 'dry' county that prohibits alcohol sales by the drink despite a 1986 state constitutional amendment allowing counties to permit them.

In 2016, Amtrak's Southwest Chief passenger train derailed near Cimarron, an incident later blamed on tracks damaged by a feed truck.