When the Wild West Came to Milwaukee

“Go west, young man; go west.”

-New York newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, 1865 

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Louisa Earp

Louisa Earp

Greeley believed that development of the vast lands west of the Mississippi could end the post-Civil War poverty and unemployment plaguing the eastern cities. Louisa Houston, Billy Breakenridge, and Daniel Charles Casey were just a few of the ambitious people from Wisconsin who believed their destinies lay in the west. 

Houston married Morgan Earp and saw the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Breakenridge was also at the gunfight but sided with the town’s corrupt lawmen. Casey was a carpenter from Madison who planned to work in the mining town of Silver City, New Mexico. He met and married the schoolteacher, Mary Richards, whose students included 14-year-old Henry McCarty Antrim. Within two years, Antrim would become famous as Billy the Kid. 

Not everyone who headed west fared as well. 50,000 settles who braved the Oregon Trail died from dysentery, cholera, smallpox or flu. Others perished accidents caused by inexperience, exhaustion and carelessness. It was common for people to be crushed beneath wagon wheels, accidentally shot to death, or drowning during perilous river crossings.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the westward trend reversed itself, and the mythology of the frontier came to Milwaukee and many other cities in the form of magazines, celebrity orators, Wild West shows, vaudeville performances, and finally, motion pictures.

Dime Novels

Lurid magazines known informally as “dime novels” were popular from 1860 to 1890. The fictional stories depicted cynical, yet heroic frontiersmen and young women attacked by despicable outlaws or savage Indians. These notoriously inaccurate publications thrived on sex, violence and gunplay. Real characters such as Wild Bill Hickok, William F. Cody, Doc Holliday, and Jesse James appeared as characters without their knowledge or permission. The protagonists were often “Indian haters” who sought revenge on native tribes for crimes in white settlements. 

Too vulgar for bookstores, these publications were sold at Milwaukee newsstands, cigar stores, and train stations. The local distributor estimated that readers spent about $3,000 a month for the publications.

The Milwaukee Journal called the novels “trash” that transformed boys into liquor-swilling cigarette-smoking hoodlums. 

Presidents, Politicians, National Figures

The outrageous prose in dime novels was offset by visitors who offered first-hand knowledge of the frontier, or at least a strong opinion. Abolitionist, activist, writer and government consultant Frederick Douglass delivered a fiery speech in Milwaukee in October 1856. Abraham Lincoln spoke at the corner of 13th and Wells in 1859. Former president Zachary Taylor talked of commanding U.S. Army troops and Wisconsin-born writer Edna Ferber appeared at the Strand theater to discuss her stories based in the west. 

Attorney William Jennings Bryan appeared at Schlitz Park in 1896 to criticize the government for paying off the huge Civil War debt by devaluing the dollar with worthless “greenbacks.” In 1898 Red Eagle, a survivor of the battle of Wounded Knee, spoke at the Volunteer Club about the massacre and surrender of 7,000 Indigenous combatants.

Newly elected president Theodore Roosevelt appeared in Milwaukee several times after 1901 to promote his vision of protecting the land and animals of South Dakota, Colorado, and California.Major Charles King, the son of Milwaukee Journal publisher Rufus King, was a veteran of several military engagements with battle-hardened Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. Later King refused offers to appear at Milwaukee theaters, instead preferring to lecture at the Pioneer, Milwaukee, and Wisconsin clubs or the Pfister and Schroeder hotels.

Wild West Shows

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Major John Burke

Major John Burke

Impresario William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s frontier wild west show drew 30,000 people to a park in 1896. Elaborate productions depicted an attack on the Overland mail stagecoach coach, a buffalo hunt, and the burning of a settler’s home by “hostile savages.” During the show, Cody’s advertising manager Major John Burke shared his version of the Wounded Knee campaign. Burke’s past had mysterious gaps that raised the suspicions of many war veterans. Miss Annie Oakley, the “Peerless Lady Wing-Shot,” was a huge attraction and remained with Cody for years. He brought his show to Milwaukee a dozen times before his death in 1917.

Circus owner Adam Forepaugh brought a western show to town in 1889 with Charles Wagner, the only survivor of the battle at Little Big Horn. Wagner was dispatched to summon more soldiers, but when he returned, General Custer’s men were dead. Another traveling western attraction starred Iron Tail, the last Native American survivor of the Big Horn, who was celebrating his likeness on the 1913 nickel. 

On the Stage

Local audiences eagerly bought tickets to see frontier melodramas like Davy Crockett at the Grand Opera House in 1884. The Standard theater at Fifth and National booked The Scout, which boasted “hair-raising depictions” of gunfights and other Western staples. The Bijou Opera House featured week-long engagements of thrillers such as The Squaw Man, The Girl of the Golden West, and The James Brothers from Missouri. The Juneau theater on Mitchell Street hosted shows performed by their resident stock company. 

Vaudeville and Dime Museums

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Sitting Bull at Milwaukee Dime Museum in 1884

Ad for Sitting Bull at Milwaukee Dime Museum in 1884

In 1884, dime museum owner Jacob Litt charged thousands of Milwaukeeans 10-cents each to see Sitting Bull and six Sioux warriors, billed as “The Custer Killers.” The Sentinel mocked the show, telling readers it was safe to walk up to Sitting Bull as “he is not on the warpath at present.” Litt also engaged the rescuers of the ill-fated Adolphus Greely expedition, the San Francisco Minstrels, a Mormon family from Utah, and a life-sized wax statue of wartime general Ulysses S Grant. Litt negotiated with former train robber and brother of Jesse James Frank James to appear at the museum in 1885, but the deal fell through. Instead Litt hired Belle Boyd, the “Mata Hari” of the Civil War, to tell of her life as a seductive Confederate spy

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Eddie Foy 1916 ad for The Majestic

Eddie Foy 1916 ad for The Majestic

At age six, future vaudeville star Eddie Foy sang in saloons to earn money for his family. At 15 he joined a theater circuit that took him to Tombstone, Arizona, Dodge City, Kansas, and other frontier towns. A decade later, Foy and his children, the Seven Little Foys, were in Milwaukee at least a dozen times, and Eddie spent his leisure time at the Schlitz Palm Garden chatting with other entertainers. Foy often told of working at Litt’s museum in a blackface minstrel show before going west.

Dr. William Carver’s Wild West show and “Cheyenne Indian Village” was a headline attraction at Pabst Park in 1907. The Wonderland amusement park had “White Buffalo’s Indian Village” featuring the “vicious Scalp Dance.” Weeks later White Buffalo was found to be F. R. Roddy, a full-blooded Irishman. As a boy Roddy was sent to live with one of Wisconsin’s Winnebago tribes. He became chief in 1899

Bill Pickett, a Black cowboy, was seriously injured during a 1908 performance at the Pabst 1908. Pickett was trampled by an infuriated Texas steer and suffered a broken jaw and bruises over most of his body. Oklahoma cowboy Will Rogers came to town in 1909 for a week at the Crystal theater. A reviewer praised his lariat spinning act and droll witticisms, and Rogers returned to Milwaukee 10 times between 1912 and 1927.

Early Western Films

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James Boys at The Bijou 1904

Ad for James Boys at The Bijou 1904

In December 1894 Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope machines premiered in the Pabst building lobby for a penny per show. A viewer peered into a slot and watched 20-second vignettes of bathing beauties, cityscapes, and Wild West scenes. 1,200 still pictures created the illusion of movement. Eight weeks later, Gimbel’s department store installed four Kinetoscopes on the second floor. 

Edison’s revolutionary Vitascope debuted to enthusiastic crowds at the Academy of Music on July 27, 1896. The ability to project motion pictures on a screen before an audience changed the way public entertainment was presented within a year.

The single-viewer Kinetoscopes, now called “automatic vaudeville,” moved to unsupervised penny arcades that attracted children as young as seven-years-old. Aldermen at once attacked the amusement parlors as filthy, smutty places of corruption and indecency. Forcing them out of business was more prudent than admonishing parents to keep better tabs on their kids.

In 1898 the Pabst theater booked lecturer Burton Holmes, who often showed films of Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and other western sites. Holmes, who did 8,000 shows during his career, returned to the Pabst annually for the next 50 years. Another popular presenter in town was Lyman Howe, a pioneer filmmaker and motion picture exhibitor whose presentations included miners, ranchers and rodeo riders. 

In 1903 Edward S. Porter made The Great Train Robbery. The film is a milestone in the history of western filmmaking that showed horseback chases, an actor falling from a roof, and the legendary scene in which the cowboy shoots his gun directly at the camera. The Western Film Exchange at Third and Wisconsin supplied Milwaukee theaters with new western movies twice a week.

The Great Train Robbery was shown at the Alhambra and Crystal theaters in April 1904. Custer’s Last Fight, In Old California, The Virginian, The Spoilers,The Last Drop of Water and the “Broncho Billy” series soon followed.

The downside of bringing Wild West entertainment to Milwaukee was the xenophobia that plagued Native Americans for decades. Grandstanding politicians painted all indigenous people as drunks while concealing the fact that Wisconsin tribes were being denied healthcare services and nutritious food.