Long before TV shows CSI or Law & Order, or real agencies like the FBI, NSA, or CIA, there was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (PNDA). Founded in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton, their motto was “We never sleep.” Pinkerton lived outside Chicago in Dundee, a small town that needed a “cooper” or barrel-maker. He was […]
Gold watch, diamond ring: I ain’t missin’ not a single thing. And cufflinks, stick pin— When I step out I’m gonna do you in. They come runnin’ just as fast as they can, ‘Cuz every girl is crazy ‘Bout a sharp-dressed man. The 80s pop group ZZ Top released “Sharp-Dressed Man” in 1983, but with […]
This week I learned about historic printing—processes of a hundred years ago or so. Mike Parker, printer, historian, and presenter at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, taught me a thing or two about printers and presses, especially as they apply to one of the most extraordinary Buffalo Bill’s Wild West posters in the […]
In Last of the Great Scouts, a biography of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody penned by his sister Helen Cody Wetmore, she writes about Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’s visit to a Boston children’s hospital. An excerpt from the 1899 book appeared in a Boston newspaper, the Sun, on August 3, 1899. Titled “Buffalo Bill’s Surprise: […]
Popular humorist Bill Nye (1850 – 1896), who also founded the Daily Boomerang in Laramie, Wyoming, worried about Buffalo Bill’s sway over youth. Writing in the New York World, October 30, 1887, Nye suggested that “Buffalo William,” as he christened him, was a bad influence on the youth of the day. Nye called it “the […]
We here at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West have our work cut out for us. With a subject as broad as the American West, we understand that you might ask, “What does it all mean?” That’s where museum interpretation comes in. We don’t want to tell you, our visitor, how to react to […]