ATDTDA (1): Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (part 3)

[Tim Strzechowski]

continuing from Larson ...

Often Cody upstaged the fair.  His main entrance was so close to one of the busiest exposition gates that some visitors thought his show was the world's fair, and were said to have gone home happy.  In June a group of cowboys organized a thousand-mile race from Chadron, Nebraska, to Chicago, in honor of the fair and planned to end it in Jackson Park.  The prize was a rich one, $1,000.  Cody contributed another $500 and a fancy saddle on condition the race end in his own arena.  The organizers accepted.

Ten riders, including "Rattlesnake" Pete and a presumably reformed Nebraska bandit named Don Middleton, set out from the Baline Hotel in Chadron on the morning of June 14, 1893.  The rules of the race allowed each rider to start with two horses and required that he stop at various checkpoints along the way.  The most important rule held that when he crossed the finish line, he had to be riding one of the original horses.

The race was wild, replete with broken rules and injured animals.  Middleton dropped out soon after reaching Illinois.  Four others likewise failed to finish.  The first rider across the line was a railroad man named John Berry, riding Poison, who galloped into the Wild West arena on June 27 at nine-thirty in the morning.  Buffalo Bill, respendent in white buckskin and silver, was there to greet him, along with the rest of the Wild West company and ten thousand or so residents of Chicago.  John Berry had to settle for the saddle alone, however, for subsequent investigation revealed that shortly after the start of the race he had loaded his horses on an eastbound train and climbed aboard himself to take the first hundred miles in comfort.

Cody upstaged the fair again in July, when exposition officials rejected a request from Mayor Carter Harrison that the fair dedicate one day to the poor children of Chicago and admit them at no charge.  The directors thought this was too much to ask, given their struggle to boost the rate of paid admissions.  Every ticket, even half-price children's tickets, mattered.  Buffalo Bill promptly declared Waif's Day at the Wild West and offered any kid in Chicago a free train ticket, free admission to the show, and free access to the whole Wild West encampment, plus all the candy and ice cream the children could eat.

Fifteen thousand showed up.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West may indeed have been an "incongruity," as the directors had declared in rejecting his request for a concession within Jackson Park, but the citizens of Chicago had fallen in love (p. 250 - 51).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Bill

http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/buffalobill/bbwildwestshow.html

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/BuffaloBill/home.html

http://www.americanwest.com/pages/buffbill.htm

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/207.6s.jpg

http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/goldmountainmining/buffalo-bill-cody-wild-west-show-sign-180.gif
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