American Experience

Narrator: Over the next three years Cody and Salsbury overhauled the Wild West, adding acts and giving it a story line. Every year the crowds grew bigger, every year the two owners reinvested their profits — in 1885 alone they cleared over $100,000. When he was a young man, Cody had sighed for the freedom of the plains. Now he realized that millions of people shared his longing.

Patricia Nelson Limerick, Historian: As the majority of Americans are moving into cities, working in offices, working in factories, they’re yearning, their imaginations are pent up and are wanting some place to run free. Setting our minds West, that turns out to be the, the thing to do. It’s just it’s a wonderful thing to think that there’s a different way of living and I can at least spend my leisure time imagining that.

Narrator: In 1886 the Wild West played to over a million people in New York. Mark Twain and P.T. Barnum both showed up and gave Cody the same advice. As Barnum put it, if they “take this show to Europe they will astonish the Old World.”

The following spring Cody, Salsbury, and the Wild West left New York harbor for England. The Wild West had become one of the most elaborate shows on earth. In a stadium near London, workers used seventeen thousand carloads of rock and earth to build the mountains in a sweeping Western landscape. Two hundred cast members: cowboys, Native Americans, vaqueros, stars like Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill himself, along with hundreds of horses, buffalo, mules, elk, steers, donkeys, and deer all moved into an encampment on the grounds.

Charles Scoggin, Writer: Essentially, everybody had a backstage pass. You could wander around and see the performers and such, see what’s going on. One of the things that might be most impressive as you first walk in is what it must have smelled like. And of course the noise. In the background the Cowboy Band is playing and you’re getting ready to see this show.

Juti Winchester, Historian: You had people to sell tickets. There were people to count the tickets. People to count the money and there was plenty of that.

Louis Warren, Biographer: There were butchers who traveled with the show. There were bakers. There were pastry chefs. There was a whole kitchen full of, of cooks. There are blacksmiths, there are wheelwrights.

L. G. Moses, Historian: Spectators were invited to go into the Indian villages to see how the people themselves lived and also to see how they shared that life with other members of the show.

Paul Fees, Historian: The Wild West was an experience for people, not just a show. When the show began, it began with a bang.