On December 11, 1909, Saloon bartender Bud Stephens shoots and kills Dode McKenzie in the town of LeBeau. Dode’s father, Murdo McKenzie, a powerful cattleman and name-sake of the town Murdo, sought to have Stephens tried for murder. Stephens claimed that he had been warned McKenzie was looking for him so he took the offensive and shot Dode. A jury acquitted Stephens, but within a year, the town of LeBeau was all but gone.
A series of newspaper articles from around the country tell portions of the story this way; Bud Stephens was a former employee of the Matador Cattle Ranch, owned by Murdo and managed by his son Dode McKenzie. Stephens was bartending in LeBeau, one of the largest cattle shipping points on the east side of the Missouri River in North Central South Dakota.
Dode and several ranch hands came into the saloon where Stephens worked and during a brief altercation, Dode was shot and killed. Stephens claimed self-defense and was acquitted. However, not all in the community agreed.
Within a year, a major fire broke out in LeBeau and when the volunteer firemen responded, they found all of their hoses had been shredded. The town of LeBeau was lost. But the community was already in decline at the time of the fire. Plans to build a rail bridge across the river at LeBeau had been dropped in favor of the new rail-head at Mobridge. Because of the changes in railroad plans, there was little interest in rebuilding LeBeau. Events in the future would have made the effort futile anyway. Construction of the Oahe Dam eventually put the town site of LeBeau under the waters of Lake Oahe.
But it was December 11, 1909, that Bud Stephens shot and killed Dode McKenzie in what writer Brad Smith called “The Gunfight That Killed a Town.”
Production help is provided by Doctor Brad Tennant, Professor of History at Presentation College.