William F. Cody

(1846 - 1917)

William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, went to work as a mounted messenger at the age of eleven, riding for the wagon-freight firm that became the Pony Express. He organized his first Wild West exhibition in 1883, taking the show to the Chicago Exposition ten years later. During the same exposition, Frederick Jackson Turner gave his paper declaring the end of the first phase of American history, “The frontier has gone.”