Wild West shows are a thing of the past, but the storied history of these sometimes outrageous performances by characters like William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, fired collective images of cowboy life in America, popularizing the western genre in books, film and theater across the world. That flame has yet to die. With the rodeo in town, what better time is there to remember a bit about the brash, bold and quirky Buffalo Bill, and how he transferred his vision of the cowboy life to influence many towns and cities in his time, including ours?

After reading a post on Facebook by local historian Jay Longley regarding Buffalo Bill’s presence in Brownwood, I got interested in seeing what else might be found about the popular frontiersman turned showman in Brown County. “This account tells that Buffalo Bill Cody was in Brownwood on at least one occasion. It was probably in the late 1870s because the Chidester Stage Line started operation in 1877. I don’t know the reason he came to Brownwood but I’d sure like to know,” Longley wrote. Jay quoted a paragraph from a book he has in possession, Frontier’s Generation by Tevis Clyde Smith, regarding Buffalo Bill being in Brownwood. It seems like Cody was not in the best of moods, as he was complaining about the slowness of the stage line in Brownwood, but maybe it was in fun. The passage reads:“The stage started at Fort Worth, came through Brownwood to El Paso, going from the border town to Fort Yuma, Arizona. There were relay stations every 18 or 20 miles along the route; here, the horses were changed, and meals were obtained. It took 36 hours to make the trip from Fort Worth to Brownwood; the stage came through here three times a week. It was a couple of days late on one occasion, and Buffalo Bill Cody, who was impatient waiting for it on the Square, said: ‘It’s a tri-weekly all right, boys; it comes one week, and tries to get here the next.’

It would seem to me that Cody was not in town to perform at the time the book records his visit, as he’s apparently traveling by stage, seemingly without his entourage of performers and animals, which would have needed its own traveling line. Maybe he was scoping out interest level in town for a future performance? It’s impossible to say for sure. I was able to discover, however, that Cody did in fact perform in Brownwood. The show took place in 1913, near the end of his career. By that time, the legendary entertainer and his traveling show, best known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, had been relegated to sideshow performance with a traveling circus called the Sells-Floto. It is claimed that Cody was tricked by that circus to sign a contract allowing the circus to absorb his own show and make him an unwilling employee of the organization. Nevertheless, Wild Bill was here in town,once again, and virtually all of Brownwood was stirred up to come out and see him.

An article in the Daily Bulletin dated Monday, October 11, 1913, describes the scene. “The big parade was staged this morning at eleven o’clock through the principal business streets. It was a parade of many novelties in which [unreadable word] marched and wheeled and maneuvered through the streets, in which clowns tumbled about, while bands, composed of women and men, of cowboys on horses and of clowns perched high upon the tableau wagons, blared and tooted. Indians were there and ranch girls, and pretty women in spangles and tinsel; there were elephant tandems and pony tandems–the whole motif of the parade seemed to be novelty, and it achieved its object. And just that it might be properly presented, there rode at the head of it Col. William Frederick Cody (Buffalo Bill). The line of the parade was about a mile long.”

The article goes on to list the circus’ major attractions. Buffalo Bill does headline the advertisement, but he’s listed at the end of the article, after Lucia Zora’s herds of performing elephants and Rhoda Royal’s troupe of horses. “And of course, there’s Buffalo Bill, the original and only Buffalo Bill, with his troupe of genuine cowboys and cowgirls, the champions of many a stampede and rodeo, with his vaqueros and Indians and his old Deadwood stage coach, and all the other things that go to make up the features of his wild west entertainment, which he is to present and supervise personally.” By 1913, Cody was 67 years old, and reportedly frequently needed help getting on to his horse before shows. Cody’s last tour was in 1914, and he died in 1917.

The Bulletin record does not state exactly where the Brownwood show was performed, only saying it was “near the Frisco.” This is seemingly a reference to a railroad line that ran from Brownwood to Brady. The Frisco line was built in 1903 and it was extended to Menard in 1911. It makes sense that a large show like the Sells-Floto would stick near to the railroad, as they must have been hauling an ungodly amount of animals and equipment along with them.

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the annual Brown County Rodeo. While a rodeo is not as outrageous as the wild west shows that Cody put on, the mythos of the rodeo, which is somewhat a toned down version of a Buffalo Bill performance at times, probably does owe something to the man. Cody’s iconic performances enthralled audiences from New York to London, perhaps even marking a turning point in American history when we stopped imitating Europe so much and began forging a distinctly American culture, filled with romanticized but also factual interpretations of America’s West and its people.

Cody’s wild west shows, and the many others that followed, paved the way for rodeo as entertainment, popularizing bucking horse competitions and bull riding exhibitions. While today’s shows leave out such things as moose and ostrich rides that were once performed alongside the standard categories, the cowboy motif lives on here in Brownwood, as the rodeo crowds demonstrate. Buffalo Bill Cody and his traveling shows drew large crowds even in smaller towns. No doubt many local kids were climbing on farm animals for weeks after seeing the trick riders, trying to rope innocent chickens and planning to grow up to be cowboys. The fascination lives on to this day.

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com