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William Frederick Cody was born on February 26, 1846 in Scott County Iowa. When "Bill" was eight years old, his family moved to Kansas. In 1857, when Bill was 11 years old, his father died. Needing money for his mother to run their household, young Bill took a job riding a mule as a messenger for a freighting company. He seemed to be well liked by the people his had dealings with.

After a year with the freight company, Bill dropped out of school and began riding with wagon trains westward. His job on these trains was tending to the livestock and driving teams of horses.

In 1860, Bill took a job carrying the mail for a Pony Express company from San Francisco, California to St. Joseph, Missouri and back again. This only lasted until 1861 as Bill had got the job toward the end of the Pony Express era.

In 1861, during the Civil War, Bill joined a Jayhawk group of guerilla fighters on the Union side fighting the Confederacy using Guerilla tactics making raids in the South. He also volenteered to scout for the Union Army.

After the war's end, Bill was a little lost. He really didn't know what he wanted to do. His youth had been busy, but now he was grown up and unemployed. Bill went back to Kansas and opened a hotel. He was happy running it so, shortly after buying it, he sold it. He thought his calling may be in the freight business so he opened one. But it wasn't long after that he was forced to go out of business when a pack of Indians raiding some of his wagons and stole the wagons and teams.

Next Bill worked construction for the railroad. This was backbreaking work with long days and that was just not for Bill Cody. But he noticed that it was hard for the railroad to get meat for the worker's meals. Most of it was gotten by hunters. Almost always the hunters would return with less that was needed to feed the men. Bill began hunting buffalo. They were bigger than deer and the meat was better than bear. Soon Bill realized that, with his skill as a marksman, he was bring a good amount of meat back. He began hunting buffalo full time and began supplying buffalo meat for the railroad gangs building the Transcontinental Railroad. There's a report that Bill actually killed 4,000 buffalo in just 18-months. Many of the men began calling him, "Buffalo Bill". The nickname stuck.

In 1868 Bill went back to the Army and worked as a civilian scout until 1872. During the Indian campaigns, Bill was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry in action in a battle with Indians on the Platte River. In 1917 the medal was revoked because Bill was not a member of the military in 1872 when the medal was issued. They waited until he was dead to revoke the medal but his family flat out refused to return it. (In 1989, the medal's honors were returned to him).

After seeing some small road shows and carnivals, Bill thought about opening a "Wild West" Show of his own. In late 1883, he did just that. He formed a Wild West Circus that featured trick shooting, fake Indian wars and trick riding and roping. From the beginning the show was a huge success. Bill ended up touring Europe making stocks in Paris and even meeting Europe's royalty. He became friends with Grand Duke Alexis and others.

Toward the late 1800s, Indian Chiefs such as Sitting Bull and Geronimo were being released from captivity and Buffalo Bill offered them jobs with his show. He managed to bring onboard Annie Oakley, the famed shooting markswoman. Bill had become friends with many Native Americans and many worked in his show staging raids on white wagon trains and families. During the first two decades of the 20th Century, western culture and the "old west" was very popular with the public. So Bill's shows drew thousands of spectators. Buffalo Bill became a wealthy man who owned several mansions and opened another hotel and restaurant in Cody, Wyoming. Sometime after 1894, Bill moved onto a ranch in northwestern Wyoming. He lived for the next 20-years in relative peace but was a huge celebrity. You could compare Bill to Elvis or the Beatles of that time. On January 10, 1917, while visiting his sister in Denver, Colorado, Bill died.
The following is from Wikipedia:
Cody died on January 10, 1917. He was baptized in the Catholic Church the day before his death by Father Christopher Walsh, of the Denver Cathedral. He received a full Masonic funeral. Upon the news of Cody's death, tributes were made by George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and President Woodrow Wilson. His funeral service was held at the Elks Lodge Hall in Denver. The governor of Wyoming, John B. Kendrick, a friend of Cody's, led the funeral procession to the cemetery.

At the time of his death, Cody's once-great fortune had dwindled to less than $100,000 (approximately $1,956,000 today). He left his burial arrangements to his wife. She said that he had always said he wanted to be buried on Lookout Mountain, which was corroborated by their daughter Irma, Cody's sisters, and family friends. But other family members joined the people of Cody to say he should be buried in the town he founded.

On June 3, 1917, Cody was buried on Lookout Mountain, in Golden, Colorado, west of Denver, on the edge of the Rocky Mountains, overlooking the Great Plains. His burial site was selected by his sister Mary Decker. In 1948 the Cody chapter of the American Legion offered a reward for the return of the body, so the Denver chapter mounted a guard over the grave until a deeper shaft could be blasted into the rock.

On June 9, 1917, his show was sold to Archer Banker of Salina, Kansas for $105,000 (approximately $2,053,000 today).

About this blog ~

I know there are a lot of photos of Buffalo Bill on the internet. But to see most of them, you have to travel from site to site. And that's a lot of traveling. I decided that, since I have a load of photos of Bill Cody in my collection, I would simply create a blog and post them all here. This way you can see a lot of them in one spot. Plus, they are mostly large photos. Not those teeny tiny little thumbnails that you can't hardly make out. So, check them out. And Thanks for stopping by today...or tonight.