Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show
/The entire Bay Area, and especially The Tri-City area is so historically rich! We have become aware of some of that richness, thanks to Bill Ralph who gathers enticing, and little-known facts about events, historic spots, key persons, their dreams and hopes, and brings them to life for us to marvel at the courage, foresight, and results of some of our predecessors’ efforts. Since we have received many positive comments about those articles, we are featuring a column each month entitled “Historic Snippets.”
Cody’s advance staff traveled into the Bay Area weeks ahead of the Wild West Show caravan to begin obtaining licenses, and renting fifteen acres of open space for upcoming performances in San Francisco, Oakland and in San Jose. In addition to beginning publicizing the upcoming events, the staff also made arrangements for the purchase tons of flour, meat, coffee and other supplies for up to five hundred cast and crew members, hundreds of show-and-draft-horses, a couple of elephants and a small herd of buffalo. The epic show traveled from town to town with two trains, fifty flat cars loaded with wagons, box cars, cattle cars, sleeping cars, power and commissary cars. The outdoor traveling show also carried its own grandstands and acres of canvas-covering to seat twenty thousand spectators,
At its peak in the late 1890’s plainsman, scout and showman William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show was making hundreds of performances a year and traveled over eleven thousand miles in the United States and in Europe entertaining millions of eager attendees. Cody traveled to Northern California with his extensive cast, crew and huge menagerie several times between 1877 and 1913.
As the orator boomed the script and Cody’s cowboy band created mood setting music in the huge outdoor arena, the stereotyped-cowboy and native American performers would kick-off their two-hour series of highly anticipated well-known skits, tableaux and demonstrations. The riding of the Pony Express, Indian attacks on wagon trains, stage coach robberies, a buffalo stampede and the grand finale re-enactment of Custer’s Last Stand were interspersed with shooting, roping and riding demonstrations by headliner star performers including the famous Annie Oakley. Following the elaborate show comprised of hundreds of costumed performers, trained animals and the appearance of Buffalo Bill Cody himself, the entire show would be struck, loaded back onto the trains and moved overnight to the next town where the complex choreographed operation would be repeated.
With the general fading of interest in the “old west”, smaller audiences, increasing costs and a four thousand dollar a day overhead, and the growing popularity of motion pictures and professional sports, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show made its final Bay Area appearance in 1913, just months before going bankrupt and disbanding. True to nature, showman and entrepreneur William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody immediately went about getting into the motion picture business by seeking backing to shoot and distribute The Indian Wars, a five-reel silent film.
