The+Wild+West+Meets+Wheeling

From 1875 to 1912, Buffalo Bill Cody brought his stage shows and Wild West extravaganza to Wheeling sixteen times, despite repeated mishaps while here.

His “combinations” (stage shows) were held at the Hamilton Opera house sited where Wesbanco now stands. Although they featured Wild Bill Hickock and other Western celebrities, the critics panned the shows. Wild Bill was so nearsighted that even though he was firing blanks, he managed to inflict powder burns on the legs of the Indians in the show. Bill suffered from intense stage fright and mumbled his words so badly that even those in the orchestra could not hear a word he said. Despite these problems, people here were so eager to learn about the “real” West that the sight of the handsome Indian Scout dressed in buckskins with his long flowing hair kept the Wheeling crowd coming to his shows.

Edward Zane Judson, whose pen name was Ned Buntline, wrote many of the plays in which Cody appeared and also managed to publish over 2,000 dime novels about Cody’s many exploits (real and imagined). Buntline was later charged with bigamy for having four wives, none of who knew about the others.

On February 25, 1876, Cody appeared with Texas Jack and his wife, a dancer, always referred to as the Peerless Morlacchii who claimed to have introduced the cancan to America. Cody described his show “The Red Right Hand or Buffalo Bill’s First Scalp for Custer” as “without head or tail. It made no difference which act we commenced the performances…It afforded us, however, ample opportunity to give a noisy, rattling gunpowder entertainment and to present a succession of scenes in the great Indian war.” What kept the crowds coming back though was Buffalo Bill’s exhibition of sharp shooting.

By 1882 Wheeling had its own fairgrounds on Wheeling Island and Cody and his 168 performers and crew, plus hundreds of animals including herds of buffalo, elk, steers, and ponies arrived in Wheeling on their special train. They camped out on the fair grounds where the Indians teepees were a curiosity to the crowds and part of the attraction. Sixty-eight Omaha, Pawnee, and Sioux Indians had joined the troop. In 1886 while re-enacting the fight on horseback with Yellow Hand, Cody lurched from the saddle to throttle the Indian, but his foot caught in the reins of the others horse and the muscles of his calf and ankle were “nearly wrenched from the bone”. He was carried to his tent where he was treated by Dr. Hazlett, and while resting visited with Major Tom Norton of Wheeling who had served in the Fifth Calvary for which Buffalo Bill had acted as a scout.

Bill’s 1895 show in Wheeling was probably his most spectacular. His train of 35 cars arrived from East Liverpool at 5a.m. and by 9 a.m. the troop was parading on the streets of Wheeling. This parade celebrated the brotherhood of man worldwide and featured vaqueros, gauchos, Royal Lancers, French Chasseurs, Canadian Mounted Rifles, South African veterans of the Boer War, cowboys, Cossacks, Mexicans, Bedouins on Arabian stallions, gauchos from South America and of course INDIANS! Herds of longhorn steers, buffalo and elk flowed up Main street, across the Steel Bridge to the Island as the cowboy band played that new, little-known song “The Star Spangled Banner”. The parade was led by Buffalo Bill with his prancing horse and flowing locks and followed by the Deadwood Stage and a carriage carrying that superstar Annie Oakley.

Although the crew spoke many different languages, they were so proficient at pitching camp and setting up for the show, that while in Germany, the German army had taken notes on their efficiency and copied their style. One spectacle of their 1898 visit, was watching the Indians water their horses in the back channel of the river. Rider and horse often disappeared when they rode into areas that had been dredged, only to reappear to thunderous applause from the on-lookers. The audience for the show that year topped 16,000 and the temperature during the show was 104 degrees.

During their 1901 visit, a wagon carrying the electric dynamo and engine that provided the lighting for the nighttime show, overturned while making the turn off the Steel Bridge to Ohio Street. This mishap cost Cody more than $60,000 in repairs and meant they could do only the matinee while here. During the show, a teepee caught fire and burned down and a cannon discharged prematurely blowing off an artilleryman’s hand.

Most of the Wild West’s visits to Wheeling were greeted by thunderous deluges of rain. Patrons sank almost to their knees in the thick gooey mud despite a liberal dosing of straw and sawdust. Hundreds of pairs of men’s and women’s overshoes could be seen sticking in the mud and the local paper reported that “dresses were lifted as women never dreamed of lifting them before”. Annie Oakley had hoped to premiere her shooting while bicycling act, but the bog conditions made that impossible.

In 1912, a former Wheeling boy, Harry Staufer rode bareback in the show. Staufer, formerly with the U.S. Coal Company at Bradley, Ohio, later joined the Sixth Cavalry and later spent three years with the show. He was the only living bareback rider to ride standing tandem on four horses racing at breakneck speed, with a foot on each of the two outside animals.

Reporters from the local newspaper asked to ride in the Deadwood stage during one show. An Indian attacking the stagecoach, inadvertently loaded his rifle with real bullets instead of blanks. A bullet hit the jaw of a reporter, bounced through the roof of the stage, and lodged in the seat of the driver’s pants. Luckily it hit only his holster.

This show was Buffalo Bill’s last visit to Wheeling. He went on to make movies and died when he was seventy years old.