William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917) rose from humble origins in Iowa to become one of the most famous and most photographed people in the world. He became a leading scout during the American Indian Wars, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and a renowned show business fixture whose traveling Wild West exhibitions played to millions of spectators the world over for 30 years. He hobnobbed with presidents, kings, queens and European heads of state, befriending many legendary individuals of the West, from General George Armstrong Custer and Sitting Bull to Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley. Aside from these achievements, Cody's most important legacy may be how he shaped the world's enduring views of the American West through his shows, which he considered to be educational events rather than entertainment. This biography is a fresh look at the life of Buffalo Bill.

Buffalo Bill rode his speedy horse toward a herd of buffalo. With careful aim, Bill dropped a buffalo with one shot. Before the day ended, he bagged ten more. In less than eighteen months, he had killed thousands. His nickname quickly spread throughout the Wild West. Buffalo Bill had many jobs, Pony Express rider, scout, soldier, buffalo hunter, but he was most famous for entertaining audiences with his Wild West show. Many Americans and others around the world could not travel to see the real Wild West, so Buffalo Bill brought it to them.

The life of William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody is part of the legend of the American West. This book traces his life from his youth in Kansas, through his careers as a Pony Express rider and military scout, to his creation of the traveling Wild West show. It explores the myths that surround Buffalo Bill as a memorable figure in the development of the western United States.

He battled Native Americans, hunted for buffalo, panned for gold, and rode for the Pony Express. He could ride, shoot, and rope cattle, and he worked as a scout for the Army. Much of what we imagine about the Wild West, from cowboys to stagecoach raids, is because of William "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Books told the stories of his exploits, and his Wild West Show toured the United States and Europe. But which of Buffalo Bill's legends are true, and which are fiction?

Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody were considered heroes and the greatest plainsmen of their time. They were larger than life, legendary characters. They knew where to locate water, good grass for livestock, sheltered campsites, and game for hunting. They knew how to survive the blistering heat and terrific thunderstorms of summer and the subzero blizzards of winter. They could avoid Indians or act as trackers following the trails of Indians as well as desperados. They were expert marksmen and did not back down from a fight. They rushed in where others held back. Hickok, a frontier wagon and stagecoach driver, became a Union spy during the Civil War, furthering his reputation after the war as a frontier Army scout, gunfighter, and lawman. Cody, who claimed to ride for the Pony Express, served in the Union Army, and became legendary as an expert buffalo hunter and Army scout. Hickok and Cody were good friends and experienced a series of adventures together. Hickok traveled to Deadwood, Dakota Territory, during the 1876 Black Hills goldrush where he was assassinated by Jack McCall. Cody continued scouting for the Army and after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, won a one-on-one duel with a Cheyenne warrior, Yellow Hair. Cody went on to become one of the most well-known showmen in the world with his Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody: Plainsmen, the fourth book in the Legendary West series, explores the lives of these two well-known characters.

Buffalo Bill Cody was bigger than life. He was also braver, handsomer, and kinder—in short, just about perfect, as any reader of Prentiss Ingraham’s dime novels could tell you. Along with his nearly 600 novels and plays, Ingraham (1843–1904), Confederate colonel and mercenary, penned a biography of his hero. The Buffalo Bill Cody who emerges from this book is not so very different from the paragon in Ingraham’s novels, but as Cody’s close companion, Ingraham had the inside story on this iconic figure of the American West. Add to that the dime novel–writer’s bravura style, and Ingraham’s Buffalo Bill Cody: A Man of the West becomes an irresistible work of Americana, in many ways an apt portrait of its larger-than-life subject. And because both men were firsthand witnesses to historic moments—the struggle between slavers and abolitionists, the Civil War, the building of the railroads, the Indian Wars, the golden age of circuses—the biography offers a close-up perspective of life on the American frontier. Published here with an introduction and notes by Cody aficionado Sandra K. Sagala, who transcribed and edited the text of the biography from the original that was serialized in 1895 by Duluth Press, and illustrated with line drawings by one of Ingraham’s contemporaries, Buffalo Bill Cody: A Man of the West is at once a unique view of an outsize figure of the Wild West, an original document of American history, and a performance as entertaining as any the self-styled cowboy and showman Buffalo Bill Cody ever staged.

A prospectors story of more than four decades mining the Santa Catalina Mountains, north of Tucson, Arizona, for silver and gold. Background of the Cañada del Oro (Canyon of Gold), Buffalo Bill Cody's mining ventures at Campo Bonito near Oracle, and the legend of the Mine With The Iron Door. Comments From hundreds of visitors at the most remote cabin on Mt. Lemmon.

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, star of the American West, began his journey to fame at age twenty-three, when he met writer Ned Buntline. The pulp novels Buntline later penned were loosely based on Cody’s scouting and bison-hunting adventures and sparked a national sensation. Other writers picked up the living legend of “Buffalo Bill” for their own pulp novels, and in 1872 Buntline produced a theatrical show starring Cody himself. In 1883, Cody opened his own show, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which ultimately became the foundation for the world’s image of the American frontier. After the Civil War, new transcontinental railroads aided rapid westward expansion, fostering Americans’ long-held fascination with their western frontier. The railroads enabled traveling shows to move farther and faster, and improved printing technologies allowed those shows to print in large sizes and quantities lively color posters and advertisements. Cody’s show team partnered with printers, lithographers, photographers, and iconic western American artists, such as Frederic Remington and Charles Schreyvogel, to create posters and advertisements for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Circuses and other shows used similar techniques, but Cody’s team perfected them, creating unique posters that branded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West as the true Wild West experience. They helped attract patrons from across the nation and ultimately from around the world at every stop the traveling show made. In Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Michelle Delaney showcases these numerous posters in full color, many of which have never before been reproduced, pairing them with new research into previously inaccessible manuscript and photograph collections. Her study also includes Cody’s correspondence with his staff, revealing the showman’s friendships with notable American and European artists and his show’s complex, modern publicity model. Beautifully designed, Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West presents a new perspective on the art, innovation, and advertising acumen that created the international frontier experience of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.