William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody experienced the western frontier in its heyday, then recreated its drama and romance on stage. Born in Iowa in 1846 and moved to Kansas Territory the year it was opened for settlement, Cody had already led a colorful life before he was out of his teens. At times a trapper, prospector and rider for the Pony Express, he also fought for the Union in the Civil War and excelled as a frontier Army scout during the Indian Wars. Cody earned his nickname while working as a buffalo hunter supplying meat to railroad construction crews (1867-1868). Edward Z. C. Judson, a writer using the pen name Ned Buntline, realized that Cody’s real life adventures were ideal for fictionalizing in dime novels. Judson made Cody the hero of his novel, then persuaded him to star in his play, The Scouts of the Prairie (1872). Cody remained on the stage thereafter — always playing himself — amid further stints as a hunter and Indian fighter. In 1883 Cody organized Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, an outdoor extravaganza that dramatized the myths and legends of the vanishing frontier. In addition to cowboys, Indians, horses, buffalo and longhorns, the troupe included at various times sharp shooter Annie Oakley and Chiefs Sitting Bull and Red Cloud. Buffalo Bill’s show toured throughout the world, where it was seen by more people in its 30 years than any other single entertainment.

The acquisition of Oregon and discovery of gold in California in the 1840s created a need for a transportation network linking the East with the Pacific coast. California pressure for a regular stagecoach service led in 1857 to the award of a federal mail contract to a syndicate headed by John Butterfield, the owner of stagecoach lines in New York. The following year, Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company began a semi-weekly mail service, operating in each direction on a 25-day schedule over a 2,800 mile route between St. Louis and San Francisco. Thousands of miles of overland routes were established in the next decade. Best-known was the Pony Express, established in 1860 by the firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell. Relays of pony riders covered the 1,966 miles between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California in only ten days, thus demonstrating the superiority of the Central Plains route over the more circuitous southerly route followed by Butterfield. But without a government subsidy the Pony Express was incapable of make a profit. In any case it was rendered obsolete after only eight months by the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line. When Russell, Majors and Waddell went bankrupt in 1862, its remaining freight lines were bought by Ben Holladay, who, after organizing a thriving stagecoach empire spanning most the the West, sold out in 1866 to Wells, Fargo, and Co.