For more on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition itself, see Larson, Devil in the White City; David F. Burg, Chicago’s White City (Louisville: University of Kentucky Press, 1976); Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 38–71; Dave Walter, Today Then: America’s Best Minds Look 100 Years into the Future on the Occasion of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (Helena, MT: American & World Geographic Publishing, 1992); and Stanley Appelbaum, The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record (New York: Dover, 1980).
Mable L. Treseder’s personal journal, “A Visitor’s Trip to Chicago in 1893,” edited for publication by her son, Sheldon T. Gardner, in 1943, is available at the Chicago History Museum.
Julian Ralph’s “Chicago—The Main Exhibit,” a spot-on essay describing a noisy, growing, feisty city on the shores of Lake Michigan, appeared in Harper’s Monthly (February 1892): 425–35.
Edith Ogden Harrison, the mayor’s wife, and her fascination with “wheel mania” are described in Duis, Challenging Chicago, 178.
British editor William T. Stead’s comments on Chicago and the fair are included in Pierce, As Others See Chicago, 355–65.
Giuseppe Giacosa’s observations appear in Pierce, As Others See Chicago, 275–86.
Lucille Rodney’s journey by foot to the Chicago fair was traced by the Galveston (TX) Daily News, June 7, 1893, 6; San Francisco Chronicle, June 11, 1893, 13; Rock Island (IL) Daily Argus, June 13, 1893; Galveston Daily News, June 23, 1893, 2; Kansas City Star, July 4, 1893, 2; Decatur (IL) Herald-Dispatch, July 29, 1893, 3; Brooklyn (NY) Daily Eagle, July 31, 1893, 2; Kansas City (KS) Daily Gazette, August 1, 1893, 1; and Galveston Daily News, August 6, 1893, 14.
Comments on Chicago and the fair by Mulji Devji Vedant appeared in the Asiatic Quarterly Review (January 1894): 190–96; and Littell’s Living Age, February 17, 1894, 435–41.
For more about the Illinois governor, see Barnard, “Eagle Forgotten”; for the pardons controversy in particular, see 178–79.
Chicago May is profiled in Nuala O’Faolain, The Story of Chicago May (New York: Riverhead, 2005).
Frederick Jackson Turner’s classic The Frontier in American History is available in numerous editions. Another understanding of Turner as a historian can be found in Gerald D. Nash, Creating the West: Historical Interpretations, 1890–1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991).
12. The Finish Line
All the nation’s major newspapers, especially those in Chicago and the smaller ones in Omaha, Lincoln, and Chadron, splashed headlines across their front pages once the tired, spent, and nearly broken riders stumbled across the finish line outside Buffalo Bill’s tent door. For the next several days, journalists closely followed the accounts of some of the riders who had raced for fourteen days; the arguments over who had won, who had lost, and who had cheated; the closed-door meetings between Cody and the race committee; the analyses by the humane society inspectors; and the triumphant parade of cowboys and horses around the Wild West show arena.
For an example of Cody’s newspaper ads promoting the Wild West show’s parade of racing cowboys, see Chicago Daily Tribune, June 29, 1893, 3.
Over the years since the race was run, a few books and magazine stories (cited in detail at the beginning of this sources section) have fleshed out additional details on those several days of indecision in Chicago about how to award the prize money and the golden Colt revolver. Otherwise, few personal stories told by the cowboys themselves survive today. One is Ora Niegel’s recounting of tales by her grandfather Joe Gillespie in True West (September–October 1959): 10–11. After he returned to central Kansas, James “Rattlesnake Pete” Stephens occasionally reflected on his glory days of racing across the middle of America. These stories ran in the Hutchinson (KS) News and the Hutchinson News-Herald on July 7, 1927; June 6, 1930; March 10, 1932; June 13, 1933, 1; April 17, 1942; June 13, 1943, 1; June 6, 1944; April 26, 1946; June 16, 1946; and May 16, 1948, 18.
There remains also the reporting of the determined (but uncredited) newsman who pedaled a bicycle after the mounted cowboys along the race’s home stretch. His accounts were published in the Chicago Inter Ocean as “They Rode Hacks,” June 28, 1893, 1, and “How They Got There,” June 29, 1893, 1.
13. The Agony Is Over
“The agony is over,” proclaimed the Chadron Citizen, June 29, 1893, 1.
The proposed new race featuring Emma Hutchinson was reported by the Chadron Citizen, June 29, 1893, 1, including a copy of her telegram to Chadron; Lincoln County Tribune, July 12, 1893, 2; Omaha Daily Bee, July 16, 1893, 5; Chadron Citizen, July 20, 1893, 1; Dawes County Journal, July 21, 1893; South Dakota Farmers’ Leader, July 28, 1893; and Red Cloud (NE) Chief, July 28, 1893, 7.
The Chicago Inter Ocean pronouncement describing the cowboy race as “dishonest” ran as an editorial on June 30, 1893, 6.
The findings of the humane society officials were reported by the Chicago Inter Ocean, July 2, 1893, 5; Chicago Herald, July 2, 1893; Lincoln Daily News, June 30, 1893, 3; and Brooklyn (NY) Daily Eagle, June 30, 1893, 1. The officials later formally presented their updated findings at a Minneapolis Humane Society meeting, as reported in the Minneapolis Tribune, September 6, 1893, and the St. Paul Daily Globe, September 6, 1893, 3.
Race secretary Weir’s tribute that “you cannot speak too highly” of the humane society inspectors appeared in the Dawes County Journal, July 7, 1893.
Cody sought input from Billy the Bear about the race and promised to send him a new pair of artificial legs, as reported in the Dawes County Journal, July 7, 1893. The paper therefore declared Billy the “only big winner” in the race. See also the Omaha Daily Bee, July 11, 1893, 4.
The Dawes County Journal, July 7, 1893, reported that Joe Campbell had been hired at $60 a month by Buffalo Bill. The Chadron Citizen mentioned it on August 10, 1893, as did the Humboldt (IA) Republican on September 21, 1893, 6.
Emmett Albright’s stolen horse was reported in the Lincoln (NE) Daily News, July 6, 1893, 1.
John Berry’s comments looking back at the race, calling it a “success outside of the frauds that were practiced,” appeared in the Dawes County Journal, July 7, 1893.
Middleton’s efforts to stage his own Wild West show are covered in Hutton, Doc Middleton. They were further reported in the Chadron Signal, July 8, 1893; Omaha Daily Bee, July 11, 1893, 4; Chadron Citizen, July 20, 1893; Chadron Signal, July 22, 1893, 1; Oshkosh (WI) Daily Northwestern, August 17, 1893, 1; Sundance (WY) Reform, September 9, 1893; Dawes County Journal, September 15, 1893; and Sundance (WY) Gazette, December 1, 1893.
For more on Jerky Bill, see Miles Edwards, “Jerky Bill—This Cowboy Could Stick to a Horse Like a Shadow at Noon,” Casper (WY) Journal, December 9, 2012.
For more on Opportunity Hank, see Shumway, History of Western Nebraska, vol. 2, 564. Hank’s mantra: “I’m a fighter, I am; I can lick any man in Chadron.”
The William Moore Gillespie letter is courtesy of Clay Comer. It was dated August 1, 1893, and was written from Cotesfield, Nebraska.
The story of the stolen and later pawned golden Colt revolver appeared in the Chicago Journal, July 14, 1893.
The antics of the boys playing cowboy in Buffalo, New York, were told in the Roanoke (VA) Times, July 12, 1893, 12.
The drunken cowboys hauled into city court in Chadron made the Dawes County Journal, September 1, 1893.
Doc Middleton’s arrest, conviction, and death in the county jail are recorded in Hutton, Doc Middleton, 206–21.
David Howell, a nephew of John Berry, spoke with the author on December 8, 2013.
John Berry’s sudden death at the local debate was reported in the Newcastle (WY) News-Journal, April 3, 1913; and the Johnstown (NE) Enterprise Supplement, April 18, 1913.
Joe Gillespie’s seven-hundred-mile wagon trek to Fay, Oklahoma, was documented en route by his wife and later published as “Coxville, Ne
braska, to Fay, Oklahoma, by Wagon (1893): The Journal of Anna Gillespie,” Nebraska History (Fall 1984): 344–65.
When Old Joe died, the local Oklahoma newspapers made no mention that he had run the fabulous cowboy race four decades earlier. But family clippings of his obituary, dated December 1933, noted that he was eighty-three years, eleven months, and twenty-three days old, and still so strong that he had outlived all nine of his siblings.
James “Rattlesnake Pete” Stephens’s obituary ran in the Hutchinson (KS) News, June 19, 1957.
Postscript
Feisty Broncho Charlie Miller’s coast-to-coast ride toward the Western sunset at age eighty-one remains an enormous feat of endurance. He is memorialized in Gladys Shaw Erskine, Broncho Charlie: A Saga of the Saddle (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1934), esp. 301–16; Corbett, Orphans Preferred, 231–45; Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 340–43; and Sam Henderson, “Broncho Charlie Miller,” Golden West (July 1996): 20–23, 50–52. His triumphant arrival at the Golden Gate was recorded by the San Francisco Chronicle, May 14, 1932.
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