The old West built its legends on gun smoke and survival, but death in the territories rarely followed a script. Some of the era’s most famous figures met ends that were strange, quiet, or bitterly ironic, and their final stories became as unforgettable as their exploits. Buffalo Bill Cody, whose traveling Wild West show made him a household name, died of kidney failure on January 10, 1917, while visiting his sister in Denver. His most recent will requested burial atop Lookout Mountain in Colorado, a spot with remarkable views.
But that frigid January rendered the mountain road impassable with snow, so the mortuary extended the preservation period for six months, requiring the body to be embalmed six separate times. During that long wait, many argued he should instead be buried in Cody, Wyoming, the town he had founded, as an earlier will requested. In the end, the consensus holds that Cody was laid to rest on Lookout Mountain, though conspiracy theories persist that his remains were quietly moved to Wyoming. Bat Masterson began his western years as a gunslinger, eventually becoming sheriff.
After meeting Wyatt Earp, who convinced him he was suited to help tame the chaos of Dodge City, Kansas, Masterson took on the role. His brothers were already in law enforcement near Dodge City, and he committed himself fully to the work. His tenure saw both triumphs and tragedy, including the killing of his brother Ed. By age forty-nine, Masterson had grown weary of the violence of the West and moved with his wife to New York, where he worked as a newspaper journalist and a U.
S. Marshal. On October 25, 1921, at sixty-seven, he died at his desk of a massive heart attack after writing what became his final column for the Morning Telegraph. During the 1800s, the name of lawman Wyatt Earp did not resonate widely.
It was only after his passing that his fame surged, ignited by a biography detailing his daring exploits, including the shootout at the OK Corral. Near the end of his life, after his gunfighting days were behind him, Earp relocated to Los Angeles, where he became an unpaid adviser in the budding world of western films, growing close to stars like Tom Mix and William S. Hart. Their bond ran deep.
Both Hart and Mix served as pallbearers at his funeral in 1929, with reports suggesting Mix was visibly moved during the ceremony. John Henry “Doc” Holliday, originally a dentist in Texas, was steered onto a different path by his passion for card games. He became close with western legends like Wyatt Earp and took part in his fair share of shootouts, gambling, and heavy drinking. That drinking aggravated the tuberculosis he already carried, steadily worsening his health.
In 1887, at age thirty-six, he checked himself into a sanitarium in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, seeking treatment. He drew his final breath in that sanitarium bed. Annie Oakley became a role model for young girls worldwide as a legendary sharpshooter, touring for years with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. But before she was that icon, she was Annie Mosey, a sixteen-year-old with an exceptional knack for shooting.
During a visit to her sister’s home, a local innkeeper arranged a trap shooting competition between her and Frank Butler, a professional exhibition shooter. The challenge was hitting the most targets out of twenty-five. Butler shot twenty-four; Oakley shot all twenty-five. The feat captivated him, and the two married shortly after.
They enjoyed nearly fifty years together until anemia claimed Oakley’s life. The circumstances of Butler’s death remain undisclosed, but he passed a mere eighteen days after her, hinting at the possible toll of a broken heart. They were buried side by side in Oakley’s family burial site. Billy the Kid was truly young.
By eighteen, he had already committed an estimated twenty-one killings and was still on the run. A few years later, Sheriff Pat Garrett apprehended him, and he stood trial, was found guilty, and was sentenced to hang. But days before his scheduled execution in 1881, Billy mounted a daring escape, leaving two guards dead. Garrett pursued him for three months until a tip revealed his location.
Garrett entered the dimly lit bedroom at the Maxwell ranch in New Mexico and waited. When Billy entered the room, Garrett shot and killed him. In the aftermath, as with many western legends, doubts emerged over whether the dead man was truly Billy or another young man who resembled him. In later years, two individuals came forward, each claiming to be Billy the Kid, but neither story could be proven.
Davy Crockett, the King of the Wild Frontier, is most remembered for his final stand at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. What is certain is that he died there on the morning of March 6, 1836, at age forty-nine. A prevailing narrative holds that Crockett, along with a contingent of two hundred men, valiantly resisted thousands of Mexican soldiers for thirteen grueling days before succumbing to overwhelming odds. Yet some historians offer an alternative: Crockett may have been among a group of six soldiers who surrendered under a promise their lives would be spared, only to be executed anyway.
Jesse James was such a skillful outlaw that the governor of Missouri, Thomas Crittenden, personally pursued his capture. After a botched bank robbery, Jesse and his brother Frank lay low, but Frank began moving toward an honest life and left Jesse’s gang. Jesse was forced to recruit new men who had no loyalty to him. Among them was Bob Ford, whose brother Charlie had recently joined Jesse.
Learning of Crittenden’s ten-thousand-dollar reward for Jesse, Bob persuaded Charlie to help turn against him. The Fords struck an accord with the governor, securing the bounty and a pardon. A few months later, the brothers were with Jesse in one of his houses. As Jesse removed his coat and holsters because of the heat, he noticed a dusty picture above the mantel and stood on a chair to clean it.
Exploiting the moment, Bob fired a fatal shot into the back of Jesse’s head. Jesse’s death became a national sensation. The Fords made no attempt to hide their role; Robert wired the governor to claim the reward, and crowds pressed into the little house in St. Joseph to see the dead bandit.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were storied figures in their own right, their real lives matching any legend. With an average take of thirty-five thousand dollars per robbery, the Wild Bunch, led by Cassidy, remained an elusive quarry for law enforcement due to his meticulous preparation. After years of criminal exploits, the pair decided to give it up and move to South America for a new life. They kept a low profile until they allegedly attempted a payroll robbery in Bolivia.
Pursued by Bolivian troops, a shootout broke out, and one man was reportedly injured. That night, two gunshots rang out, and the men’s bodies were recovered with bullet wounds to the head—one directly between the eyes of the Sundance Kid, and Cassidy with a self-inflicted shot to the temple. Vigorous debate persists over their identities. Some claimed one or both survived and returned to the United States.
One claim held that the Sundance Kid lived under the name William Henry Long in the small town of Duchesne, Utah. Long died in 1936, and his remains were exhumed in December 2008 for DNA testing. Anthropologist John Mulla stated that Long’s remains did not match the DNA obtained from a distant relative of the Sundance Kid. Belle Starr was likely more an associate of criminals than a hardened offender herself.
She faced one conviction for horse theft, which led to nine months in prison, but never ran into legal trouble again. She cultivated close ties with outlaws and men of dubious reputation, including two husbands who died in gunfights, and she was linked to the James-Younger gang. On February 3, 1889, two days before her forty-first birthday, Belle was riding home from a neighbor’s house when she was ambushed. After she fell from her horse, she was shot again to ensure she was dead.
She died of shotgun wounds to the back, neck, shoulder, and face. Her killer was never found. Rumors surrounded her demise, and in at least one version of events, her own son Ed played a part. Wild Bill Hickok made his name after a magazine published his story of killing three men, beginning his renown as a sharpshooter.
He engaged in a series of gun battles but eventually stopped after accidentally causing the death of his own deputy. As time passed, his popularity waned, and he fell into hard times, scraping by as a card player in Deadwood, South Dakota. One August day, positioned with his back to the saloon entrance, he was confronted by a young gunslinger, Jack McCall, who fired a fatal shot into the back of Wild Bill’s head. In his final moments, he was holding a pair of aces and eights, a combination forever known as the dead man’s hand.
Calamity Jane’s name itself reveals a vibrant life. To make a living, she occasionally adopted male attire, worked with the Pony Express, and some records suggest she engaged in prostitution. She joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, renowned for her adept marksmanship while riding a horse. Her growing popularity was matched by a reputation for heavy drinking and enjoying life’s pleasures.
The whiskey caught up with her, leading to severe alcoholism that plagued her for years until her death at fifty-one. She was buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery in South Dakota, next to Bill Hickok. Four of the men who planned her funeral later stated that Hickok had absolutely no use for Jane while she was alive, so they decided to play a posthumous joke on him by burying her by his side.