Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. any town associated with cattle trading; thus anywhere provincial as opposed to a big city.

1900		H. Garland Eagle’s Heart 112: A couple of rude groceries completed the necessary equipmnent of a ‘cow-town’.
1903		A. Adams Log Of A Cowboy 102: This cow town had the reputation of setting the pace that left the wayfarer purseless and breathless.
1907		C.E. Mulford Bar-20 ix: Those who desired sudden and much wealth as the necessary preliminary of painting some cow town in all the ‘bang up’ style such an event would call for.
1913		Madison Jrnl (LA) 30 Aug. 3/1: The thought of that little affair do make my face as red as a cow-town on payday.
1924		E. Ferber ‘Our Very Best People’ One Basket (1947) 254: Beastly idea [...] having to get off a train for your meals, like that. And those cow towns!
1954		Mad mag. Mar. 27: A hot summer sun looks down on a terrified cow-town.
1958		J.D. Horan Wild Bunch (1960) 107: Fanny [...] the manager of a bawdyhouse on the edge of this rip-roaring old cowtown.
1965		J.L. Herlihy Midnight Cowboy (1968) 161: And Chicago, mind you, is no mere cow town.
1976		E. Thompson Caldo Largo (1980) 70: If Western movies were true, I am sure the main streets of all those cowtowns would be mud, too.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 97: A cow town is a small, isolated one, and a cow college is a little-known institution in the sticks.
1991		C. Hiaasen Native Tongue 250: An immediate transfer to some godforsaken cowtown would be a certainty.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1930		W.R. Burnett Iron Man 10: Lay off that cow-town soubrette, she’ll make a bum out of you.
1942		Whizzbang Comics 99: After a quick examination the rough cow-town doctor grinned.
1962		S. Longstreet Flesh Peddlers (1964) 80: A Bible Belt cow-town lawyer.
1966		H.S. Thompson letter 20 July in Proud Highway (1997) 580: Those cow-town judges can put you away for six months for having an open (unsealed) container (of booze) in your car.

3. Fort Worth, Texas.

1965		J. Thompson Texas by the Tail (1994) 71: Fort Worth . . . Cowtown. Where the West begins.
1987		‘Joe Bob Briggs’ Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In 96: He witnessed what happened over in Cowtown last Saturday night.