I was just watching Gunsmoke reruns on the new Westerns Channel, and it struck me that when we had that "phrases from movies and TV" thread way back when, we missed "Get out of Dodge!", a phrase that has also evolved into many variants such as "it's time to get out of Dodge", etc. I'm surmisin' this came from the TV Western, but I could be wrong. It *could have come out of the original history of the town, too. Anybody know?

Dave Wilton, on wordorigins, has this to say:

http://pub122.ezboard.com/fwordoriginsorgfrm8.showMessage?topicID=20.topic

Actually it comes from an old movie about traffic cops. In one scene a cop draws down on the miscreant behind the wheel and tells him in a menacing voice, "Get out of the Dodge."

My brother has an old Dodge truck and lived at the time in West Virginia, which required an annual safety inspection. Bob took his pickemup down to the local inspection station, only to be informed by the inspector, "Bob, this old truck ain't gonna pass this time."

"Why not?" asked Bob.

"Horn don't work."

"Hayell," replied Bob, "it don't need no horn, it's got a visual warning device. See right there on the hood it says 'Dodge.'"

When we were doing our big trip across the US in 2001, we went to Dodge City - which was a few hundred miles off our main route, 66 - just so we could say that we'd gotten the hell out of Dodge.

That was a fortunate side-trip as it happens, because we went from there to Wichita and so discovered the Hutchinson Cosmodrome which is, for my money, the best aerospace museum in the world, bar none!