Cow Creek is a 112-mile-long (180 km) stream that flows through Rice and Reno Counties, Kansas. Cow Creek is a tributary of the Arkansas River; its confluence with the Arkansas is about ten miles southeast of Hutchinson, Kansas. In the 1850s, Buffalo Bill Mathewson ran a trading post (known as "Buffalo Bill's Well") where the Santa Fe Trail crossed Cow Creek. From Lyons, Kansas, the well is located four miles west and one mile south.