News

Jun 15, 2023

When Buffalo Bill came to Santa Cruz

It seemed a rather dirty trick. In December 1912 the children of miners in Oracle, Arizona, finally got to have a Santa Claus to talk to, and give them presents, only to learn later that it wasn’t the

It seemed a rather dirty trick. In December 1912 the children of miners in Oracle, Arizona, finally got to have a Santa Claus to talk to, and give them presents, only to learn later that it wasn’t the real Santa Claus. It was Buffalo Bill! They’d much rather have known they were meeting the real Buffalo Bill than Santa Claus!

Of course, “real” was a relative term when it came to Buffalo Bill and Santa Claus. Both inhabited a partly mythical world, but folks willingly entered that realm to experience the sense of magical possibilities. Life was hard, but Santa rewarded good behavior with their heart’s desire. Likewise, the real West was a lawless horror of random violence, Indians, outlaws, savage beasts and grueling physical labor. But when translated to the stage by Buffalo Bill, it became a heroic adventure of taming the wild frontier and expanding the virtues of American civilization to the Pacific. It was promoted as “educational,” and when people saw real cowboys, Indians and legendary Western heroes playing themselves, one had to believe there was some truth in it.

Buffalo Bill’s Original Wild West Show came to Santa Cruz in 1914 and 1915, by which time it was part of Sell-Floto Circus, but featured Buffalo Bill Cody himself. He had a private tent at the circus grounds by the boardwalk, but he and his wife Louisa, stayed at 145 Seabright Ave., near the old Gault School. This was the cottage home of Bill’s widowed sister Mrs. Lydia B. Goulding. Another local relative was said to be Fred A. Cody, owner of the Ben Lomond water works, and former owner of the Ben Lomond Hotel.

At one time, Buffalo Bill was the most recognizable celebrity in the world, touring the U.S. and Europe, meeting with presidents, royalty, and even Pope Leo XIII. Yet Bill was no longer instantly recognizable as the youthful version of himself most folks remembered. He was 68 years old, though looked older, and was privately depressed at the crumbling of his entertainment empire.

Yet Bill Cody was a lifelong fighter through difficult times. Born in 1846 in a log cabin on the Iowa prairie, his parents, Isaac and Mary Cody, were Quakers who opposed slavery. They were living in Missouri in 1854 when the Missouri Compromise preventing the expansion of slavery into the North, was repealed, and replaced with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowing a state to vote whether it would be Slave or Free. The Boarder Wars led to a struggle called Bleeding Kansas.

The Codys moved to Kansas Territory to farm and oppose slavery. At Rively’s Trading Post, someone was advocating the virtues of slavery to the crowd. They asked Isaac his opinion, and he gave such an impassioned speech against slavery, he was stabbed twice in the chest with a Bowie knife. While Isaac recovered, he died three years later of complications in 1857, forcing young Bill to go to work at age 11. Bill worked for wagon trains, first as a messenger between drivers, or to the whole train, then as a bullwhacker. During this time he met his boyhood idol, the scout Kit Carson. In 1861, Bill joined the Pony Express at age 14, recalling he once rode a couple hundred miles in a snowstorm. But with the commencement of the Civil War, he joined a Jayhawker guerrilla band loyal to the Union cause, then enlisted in 1864 in the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry.

After the war, he married Louisa Frederici in 1866, then was part of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1867, gaining his nickname from the buffaloes he hunted to feed the crew. He joined the U.S. 5th Cavalry as a scout in 1868, rescuing a troop guided by Wild Bill Hickok. The 5th Cavalry also fought against the Sioux and Cheyenne, winning Cody the Medal of Honor in 1872. Ned Buntline had been looking to do a dime novel about Wild Bill Hickok, but instead hooked up with Cody, exaggerating his exploits into a pulp fiction novel, that was turned into a play. Buntline also wrote another play starring Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack Omohundro as themselves. It was poorly written, but drew crowds for years, eager to see a living portrayal of the Wild West. Buffalo Bill also co-starred in a play with Wild Bill Hickok.

Buffalo Bill came to love the spotlight, and in 1883, premiered “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show” in an outdoor arena. Unlike his stage shows, there was no over-arching story, just a theme of the Taming of the West. He invited real Westerners with real skills and molded parts for them in various settings. A narrator wove together the various scenes, with mood music by a cowboy band. Bill’s perspective changed over the years.

He got to know Indigenous tribes and became close friends with Sitting Bull. Bill said “Every Indian outbreak that I have ever known was the result of broken promises and broken treaties by the government.” Likewise, having friends like Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane, he advocated for women’s suffrage, believing gender restrictions had no purpose. In wages, he paid the same rates to his performers regardless of gender or race. And although his very name immortalized his part in the destruction of the wild herds of buffalo, he did interviews advocating for conservation and short hunting seasons. To depict the vanishing buffalo hunt in a non-lethal way, his Wild West Show had the largest buffalo herd in captivity.

Once Buffalo Bill’s show had led the way in quality and popularity, but he was starting to question his own myths, leading to drinking, mismanagement and competition from the movies. To save his Wild West Show, he combined it with Pawnee Bill’s in 1908, then gave a series of farewell tours in 1910. Unfortunately, he went bankrupt in 1913 and joined up with Sells-Floto Circus in 1914 and 1915 to pay his debts. Yet the days were over when he’d have to sleep on gravel under a saddle blanket, with a saddle for a pillow. Sells-Floto management was glad to give the old warhorse a private rail car, private tent, chef, valet and masseur.

Santa Cruz began advance ticket sales at O.L. Ward’s Drug Store in the St. George Hotel, where tickets were 25¢ each, or 50¢ for reserved seating. But in 1915, the competition was fierce. Al G. Barnes 3-Ring Wild Animal Circus appeared in Santa Cruz April 19, after which was scheduled Sells-Floto Circus & Buffalo Bill’s Original Wild West for May 7. As if that wasn’t enough, this was also the year of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, and the California-Pacific Exposition in Balboa Park, San Diego. Then on April 29, a rainstorm with high winds blew down fir trees closing the highway to Big Basin state park, and damaging apple crops in the Pajaro Valley. In response to the wild weather, the Sells-Floto press agent insisted this was the “Safety First” Circus. Thanks to inventions by their superintendent William Curtis, the seats were secured with wire cables instead of toe-pins, making them unable to fall in even the heaviest wind.

At last on May 6, the big double-circus came to Santa Cruz in two trains, which were unloaded both at the Union Depot and near the River Grove circus grounds at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River. The late Sentinel historian Preston Sawyer said that the Circus Grounds were in the Leibbrandt Tract from about 1900 to 1925. People always turned out to watch the circus trains being unloaded, and little kids hoped for some job that would earn them a free ticket. The tent poles and canvas were raised using elephants, in a spectacular show of efficiency. The previous year, hauling water from the river to the elephants was a favorite job of young boys, but with the installation of hydrants throughout the grounds, hauling was unnecessary. Yet this was two circuses for the price of one, so there was double the work. To avoid raising the price of 25¢ tickets, they instead increased the tent size to cover 11 acres, hoping to sell twice the number of tickets to fill 10,000 seats.

At 10:30 a.m. on May 7, Buffalo Bill led a parade stretching two miles long, which began at the circus grounds, and paraded along Pacific Avenue and back to the waterfront. It contained nine bands, exotic animals in cages, three herds of elephants with riders, 400 horses pulling carriages or circus wagons or carrying riders, 40 clowns, plus his Wild West attractions. After the parade, a reception was held at the circus grounds for the children.

At last, the throng poured into the tent for the grand spectacle. With the bands playing, there was no way to hear anything a clown might say, so their antics had to be pantomime, as if this was a silent movie. Buffalo Bill acted as narrator for his Wild West Show, using a megaphone. Scenes would include a living “Indian Village” in various activities, racing Pony Express riders, a wagon train crossing the country then circling the wagons for an Indian attack; a stagecoach hold-up, followed by a posse tracking down the outlaws; a cowboy cattle-drive, followed by a rodeo of roping and bronco busting. Cowboys and vaqueros performed ranch skills, including trick riding and trick shooting.

Buffalo Bill said farewell to his sister on May 9, the last time they saw each other. Lydia Goulding died nine months later on Feb. 10, 1916, at which time her relationship was reported in the Santa Cruz News. Buffalo Bill Cody warned about the coming war, but died Jan. 10, 1917, in Denver, three months before America entered the war on April 6, 1917.

The Wild West Shows had been declining in attendance, the last of P.T. Barnum’s age of humbug. But the young kids who were developing an interest were part of the new scouting movement. It was started in England by Robert Baden-Powell in 1908, then incorporated as Boy Scouts of America in 1910, and the Girl Scouts of America in 1912. Using a code of ethics as their basis, they drew out of the exaggerated Wild West vignettes, a love of nature, outdoor skills like tracking, camping, woodcraft, horseback riding, swimming, lifesaving and patriotism. They sought to learn from the cowboys, frontiersmen, and “Indians,” in a search for authenticity. Sometimes it just takes a pure heart to find the good in something.

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