BOOT HILL!

DEADWOOD, South Dakota

WILD BILL

Birth: May. 27, 1837
Death: Aug. 2, 1876
Born in Troy Grove, near Ottawa, Illinois, he took part in the Kansas struggle preceding the Civil War, was a driver of the Butterfield stage line, and gained fame as a gunfighter. He was an assistant station tender for the Pony Express at the Rock Creek, Nebraska station. He served as a Union scout in the Civil War. After the war he became deputy United States Marshal at Fort Riley (1866), Marshal of Hays, Kansas (1869), and Marshal of Abilene (1871).

His reputation as a marksman in desperate encounters with outlaws made him a frontier legend. Hickok once shot and killed his own deputy in error, which was the downfall of his career as a lawman. After a tour of the East with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show(1872 to 1873), he went to Deadwood, South Dakota where he was murdered by Jack McCall while playing cards at the #10 Saloon.

The hand Hickok had held, a pair of Aces and a pair of Eights, thereafter became known as "The Dead Man's Hand."
Cause of death: Shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall
Mount Moriah Cemetery
Deadwood
Lawrence County
South Dakota, USA

May. 1, 1852
Princeton
Missouri, USA
Death: Aug. 1, 1903
American Folk Figure. Born Martha Jane Cannary, Calamity Jane is nearly as famous as Bill Hickok was and is known to be as tough as any man in the West. Raised in the mining camps of Wyoming, she is a legendary horsewoman and crack shot, and was an Army scout for Custer. Her apparent immunity to small pox made her extremely valuable as a nurse during the small pox outbreak. She got her famous nickname by rescuing Captain Egan, whose command she was under at the time. She pulled him off his own horse and rode with him as fast as she could back to the Fort. Captain Egan gave her her famous nickname, "Calamity."