There was a new lawman in town at Johnson County’s Monticello Township, following an election on March 22, 1858.

He was James Butler Hickok, who was elected one of four constables in the township. It was the first of several law enforcement jobs he was to hold during his lifetime. He also was a scout, a sharpshooter, a professional gambler and eventually known as “Wild Bill” Hickok, legendary lawman of the Old West.

At age 20, Hickok upheld law and order in Monticello, a small town with a stagecoach stop, a few stores and saloons, and the countryside of Monticello Township. A year later, he was gone, becoming a freight wagon driver, and later working at a station of the Pony Express.

Hickok was born in Homer (now Troy Grove), Illinois, and he learned his shooting skills protecting the farm with his father from anti-abolitionists. He was a good shot from a very young age.

In 1855, Hickok left his father’s farm to become a stagecoach driver on the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails. His killing of a bear with a bowie knife while a stagecoach driver cemented a growing reputation as a genuinely tough man who feared nothing. He became known as “Wild Bill.”

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 opened up territory in Kansas to settlement and offered Hickok the opportunity to go West for a new beginning with the lure of cheap land. He arrived in Leavenworth in June 1856 and awaited the opening of Shawnee Indian Reservation land for settlement in Johnson County.

In a letter to his family in November 1856, Hickok said he was looking to purchase land in Johnson County, calling it “the finest country in Kansas I ever saw," according to the Kansas Historical Society.

In 1857, he built a log cabin and claimed a 160-acre tract of land near the corner of 83rd Street and Clare Road in what is now the city of Lenexa. He also briefly worked at the Reed Hotel in the town of Monticello until being elected constable. The sheriff had authority over all of Johnson County while constables enforced the law in townships.

His time as Monticello Township’s lawman was mostly tame for Wild Bill. Outside his farming and law enforcement duties, Hickok spent his time playing cards in local saloons, another trait that he famously maintained throughout his life.

Hickok abandoned his farming claim in the late summer of 1859, turned in his badge, and left Johnson County, heading north to the Nebraska Territory. He returned to Kansas a few times, serving as a deputy federal marshal in Hays, sheriff and city marshal of Ellis County, and marshal in Abilene. He left Kansas for good in 1871.

Wild Bill Hickok was killed on Aug. 2, 1876, while playing five card stud poker in a saloon at Deadwood in the Black Hills, Dakota Territory. He was 39.

He was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1980. His poker hand at the time of his murder was two pairs: black aces and eights. It’s forever known as the dead man’s hand – the unluckiest hand one can have.

Johnson County Museum’s Lanesfield School Historic Site in Edgerton features information on Wild Bill Hickok regarding his involvement with the Free-State Army.

In 1993, the one-acre Wild Bill Hickok Park was dedicated in his honor at 85th Terrance and Clare Road in Lenexa. Learn more about Hickok's time in Johnson County in this article from the JoCoHistory blog.