Buffalo Bill Cody
Col. William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was born on February 26, 1846, near LeClaire in Scott County, Iowa. In 1853, his family moved to the Salt Creek Valley in Kansas, where they were among the first settlers.
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Young Cody began his colorful career at the ripe old age of 11, when he signed on as an ox-team driver for 50 cents a day. Two years later, he hired on as an "extra" or messenger boy with a westbound Russell, Majors and Waddell bull train. In 1858, he became assistant wagon master on a bull train headed for Fort Laramie, where he joined a party of trappers on the Chugwater River.
The next year, Cody attended school for nearly a month. In 1859, young Bill joined the gold rush to Pikes Peak, Colo. Then in 1860, he became a Pony Express rider, one of the youngest on the line at age 14. He once rode 322 miles in 21 hours, 40 minutes, exhausting 20 horses.
While too young to enlist in the Army during the early years of the War Between the States, Cody served the Union forces as ranger, dispatch bearer, and scout in Missouri, Kansas, and the Santa Fe Trail. In 1864, he enlisted in the Kansas Volunteer Infantry and served until the end of the war. At that time he drove a stage between Fort Kearny and Plum Creek (Lexington), Nebraska.
On March 6, 1866, he married Louisa Frederici of St. Louis and ran the Golden Rule House hotel in Salt Creek Valley, Kansas, later the same year, he went to work as a government scout at Fort Elsworth, Fort Fletcher, and Fort Hays, Kans. On December 16, his daughter Arta was born.
In 1867-68 he was employed by the Goddard brothers to provide buffalo meat for workers on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. He was paid $500 a month and is said to have killed 4,280 buffalo in 8 months. Cody claimed the title of "Buffalo Bill" in a buffalo hunting contest near Sheridan, Kansas. He outshot Bill Comstock, another buffalo hunter, shooting 69 buffalo to Comstock's 46.
As a government scout in 1868, headquartered at Fort Larned, Kan., he performed remarkable endurance rides, once covering 355 miles in 58 hours of day and night riding. From 1868 to 1872, he served with the Fifth Cavalry in various expeditions against the Indians. In 1870, his son, Kit Carson Cody was born, but the youngster died at the age of 5 in Rochester, N.Y., in 1876.
Cody kept plenty busy in the year 1872. He guided the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia on a hunting trip and was almost elected to the Nebraska Legislature on the Democratic ticket at age 26. In August, his daughter Orra was born. In November, Cody resigned his position as a U.S. Army scout to go back East with Texas Jack to act in Ned Buntline's stage play about the frontier. It was Cody's first taste of the world of grease paint, and he cottoned to it right off.
Still, Cody returned to the West in 1876, when Colonel Mills requested his service to guide General Crook into Indian territory of Wyoming. After the Custer Massacre on the Little Big Horn, Cody, who was serving under General Merritt, found himself on July 17, 1876, near Hat Creek in Northwest Nebraska. It was here that Cody allegedly killed a Cheyenne sub-chief called Yellow Hair (misinterpreted as Yellow Hand).
Later that year, the stage lured him back, and he went on tour until 1878, portraying scenes from the Sioux War.
However, in 1877, he went into partnership with Frank and Luther North to establish a cattle ranch near North Platte, where he took up residence the following year.
In response to a plea from the townsfolk of North Platte to organize an appropriate western shebang for the Fourth of July, Cody staged the first Old Glory Blowout in 1882. The "Blowout" has since been heralded as the beginning of rodeo in the US. It could also be considered a trial run for his Wild West Show, which was to bring him fame around the world. The following year, he organized his Wild West Combination, which was unveiled in Omaha on May 17. Earlier that year, his daughter Irma was born on February 9.
From 1883 to 1886, Cody successfully toured the United States with his Wild West Show, taking the wild and woolly frontier to the doorsteps of eastern dudes. In 1887, he took the show on a triumphant tour of England. That same year he was appointed "aide-de-camp", with the rank of Colonel, by Nebraska Governor John M. Thayer, to serve the Nebraska National Guard. He crossed the Atlantic again in 1889 to enthrall Europe with America's real West.
Buffalo Bill's "Wild West" played adjacent to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and in 1896 he founded the town of Cody, Wyoming. In 1898, August 31 was celebrated as Cody Day at the Trans-Mississippi exposition in Omaha. Then, in 1900, Cody went into partnership with James A. Bailey (Barnum and Bailey). In 1902, an enlarged show again toured Europe. During the decade of 1900 to 1910, Cody poured his money into a variety of projects from irrigation systems to mines and financed friends and relatives. Many of his ventures were ill-fated and disastrous financially, leaving him in dire monetary straits. As a result, he borrowed money from Bonfils & Tammen of Denver in 1912, pledging his services as collateral. From 1913 to 1917, his already bleak financial situation gradually worsened.
He joined with William Lillie (Pawnee Bill) in the Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Pawnee Bill's Far East Show in 1908. This combine toured for a time, but misfortune seemed to follow, and this show also failed. Cody then appeared with the Sells-Floto Circus. The season of 1916 was Cody's last appearance on the circuit.
At the close of the 1911 season Cody was in need of money and sold Scout's Rest Ranch and some 3,000 acres to his show partner Pawnee Bill for $100,000. The Cody family remained at the ranch until April of 1913 when they moved to Cody, Wyoming.
Taken advantage of by friends and foes alike, Cody was a tired, but ever optimistic, old man. He had made and spent fortunes. He died on January 10, 1917, at the home of his sister, May Cody Decker, in Denver. He was buried on Lookout Mountain near there just before his 71st birthday.
- content from Cody Wyoming Chamber of Commerce
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