<P> At the same time, the Chisholm Trail was opened and the Wild West - era commenced in Kansas . Wild Bill Hickok was a deputy marshal at Fort Riley and a marshal at Hays and Abilene. Dodge City was another wild cowboy town, and both Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp worked as lawmen in the town . In one year alone, eight million head of cattle from Texas boarded trains in Dodge City bound for the East, earning Dodge the nickname "Queen of the Cowtowns ." </P> <P> In response to demands of Methodists and other evangelical Protestants, in 1881 Kansas became the first U.S. state to adopt a constitutional amendment prohibiting all alcoholic beverages, which was only repealed in 1948 . </P> <P> Kansas is bordered by Nebraska on the north; Missouri on the east; Oklahoma on the south; and Colorado on the west . The state is divided into 105 counties with 628 cities, and is located equidistant from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans . The geographic center of the 48 contiguous states is in Smith County near Lebanon . Until 1989, the Meades Ranch Triangulation Station in Osborne County was the geodetic center of North America: the central reference point for all maps of North America . The geographic center of Kansas is in Barton County . </P> <P> Kansas is underlain by a sequence of horizontal to gently westward dipping sedimentary rocks . A sequence of Mississippian, Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks outcrop in the eastern and southern part of the state . The state's western half has exposures of Cretaceous through Tertiary sediments, the latter derived from the erosion of the uplifted Rocky Mountains to the west . These are underlain by older Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments which correlate well with the outcrops to the east . The state's northeastern corner was subjected to glaciation in the Pleistocene and is covered by glacial drift and loess . </P>

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