Bury Me Next to Bill: A Look at the Alleged Romance Between Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane
For more than a century, the rumor of a romance between Wild West icons Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane has persisted. The two are even buried side by side. So, does this legend have any truth?
A Tall Tale?
Gold! This thrilling discovery in 1874 set off a rush to the northern Black Hills of South Dakota. By 1876, miners and prospectors flooded the area. They found a creek full of gold and a gulch full of dead trees.
Deadwood was born.
Almost overnight, the area was saturated with prospectors, gunslingers, outlaws, and gamblers. The boom became a symbol of the wildest parts of the Wild West, attracting notable names such as Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Al Swearington, and Seth Bullock.
Legendary characters that have been reborn in the HBO series – Deadwood, often with more fictionalized versions than truth. Deadwood has survived fires, economic downturns, infamy, and revival as a tourist attraction. In 2026, the legendary town hits its 150th anniversary.
Of all the legends to spin out of Deadwood, one of the most persistent involves the relationship between two of the town’s most famous residents. Were Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane a romantic couple? Calamity Jane’s dying request was to be buried by her “true love.” Did the pair have a secret relationship? Or was it a practical, posthumous joke played on Hickok by his friends?
Wild Bill Hickok
One of the most legendary of Deadwood’s ‘characters’ was Wild Bill Hickok, even though he only spent a few short weeks in the town.
Wild Bill was born James Butler Hickok in Homer, Illinois, on May 27, 1837. History doesn’t record how Hickok came by his notoriously fast draw, but in Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter, author Tom Clavins points out Hickok was ambidextrous. He had the almost miraculous ability to be adept with a gun in either hand.
After working as a military spy and scout during the Civil War, Hickok gained a reputation after a notorious July 1865 duel in Springfield, Missouri. He’d lost a gold watch to a man named Davis Tuttle while gambling.
During a quick-draw duel, Tuttle lost both the watch and his life. At trial, Hickok was cleared of manslaughter charges. The jury verdict was not guilty because it was a “fair fight.”
During the late 1860s, Hickok moved throughout Kansas, alternating between stints as a lawman, scout, and Indian fighter. In 1869, he was elected city marshal of Hays City, Kansas, and sheriff of Ellis County, Kansas. In September 1869, he killed two men in his first month as sheriff, further cementing his reputation as a fast draw.
The shootings were found to be justifiable despite “contradictory” statements from witnesses. After killing a man who attacked him in a saloon and losing his re-election bid for sheriff, Hickok became marshal of Abilene, Kansas, in April 1871.
There he became involved in a running feud with a saloon owner named Phil Coe. One afternoon, Coe pointed his gun at Wild Bill but was shot and killed by the quicker Hickok.
Moments later, Hickok caught sight of someone running towards him and quickly fired two shots, fearful he was being ambushed by friends of Coe’s. Instead, he killed special deputy marshal Mike Williams, who was coming to his aid. The accidental killing would haunt him for the rest of his life and would be Hickok’s last gunfight.
After being relieved of his duties in Abilene, Wild Bill attempted to earn money entertaining crowds. His friend, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, asked him to join his western extravaganza.
However, Hickok hated acting, the crowds, and mostly the spotlights that bothered his eyes. He once shot out a spotlight aimed at him. It would later come to light that Hickok’s eyesight had been failing, possibly from glaucoma.
In the spring of 1876, Hickok married a widow and circus owner named Agnes Lake Thatcher in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. However, just a few months later he left his wife to travel to Deadwood, hoping to rake in some gold at the gambling tables. He arrived in Deadwood in July 1876 along with his best friend, Charlie Utter.
On August 2, 1876, Hickok was playing poker at the Nuttal & Mann Saloon, No. 10 in Deadwood. The day before, a man named Jack McCall had lost heavily to Hickok. Hickok suggested he stop playing before he lost any more money and even gave McCall some money to buy himself breakfast.
Insulted, McCall showed up the next day, walked up behind Hickok, and shot him in the back of the head. Wild Bill died instantly. Hickok’s poker hand, black aces and eights, became known as the “Dead Man’s Hand.” He was only thirty-nine years old.
Jack McCall was tried and hanged for Hickok’s murder on March 1, 1877. Hickok was first buried in Ingleside Cemetery and later moved to Mount Moriah Cemetery.
Calamity Jane Canary
Martha Jane Canary was born May 1, 1852, in Princeton, Missouri. Three years later, the family had taken a wagon train to Virginia City, Montana, and later to Salt Lake City, Utah, where her mother died. By 1867, her father had also died, leaving fourteen-year-old Martha to support her five younger siblings. She took any type of job she could get, including prostitution, to make ends meet.
Later in life, Calamity Jane would dictate her own “biography”, Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane. In it, she claimed she was given the name Calamity Jane during a campaign against Native Americans in 1872. Though others have disputed this account and attributed her nickname to her wild ways.
Jane was a notorious alcoholic and worked regularly at dance halls and saloons. She frequently dressed in men’s clothing and drove stage coaches, or so she claimed. According to her biography, she was a sharpshooter, frontierswoman, and helped the U.S. Army in the constant conflict against the Native Americans on the plains. Whether any of it is true is up for debate.
By the time she arrived in Deadwood, Jane had already survived a lifetime of hardships and adventures. In 1876, she joined the wagon train led by Charlie Utter, coincidentally the same one Hickok took to reach Deadwood. This was likely Calamity and Wild Bill’s first meeting, although Jane would later say they had known one another before and were secretly married.
Calamity would later say she had “divorced” Hickok so that he could marry Agnes Thatcher. However, no documentation exists to prove this or their supposed marriage. She would later claim to have chased Jack McCall with a meat cleaver after learning of Hickok’s death. Again, there’s no verified proof of this happening.
Jane had several children by unknown fathers, worked as a laundress and cook in a bordello in Terry, South Dakota, and performed with Buffalo Bill Cody at his Wild West show.
Calamity Jane died of acute alcoholism and pneumonia at age 51 on August 1, 1903, just one day before the anniversary of Wild Bill’s 1876 murder.
Her last request, or so the legend goes, was to be buried next to Wild Bill Hickok in the Deadwood Cemetery. And there she lies … but was it because they were ill-fated lovers of a secret romance? Or something else?
Fact or Fiction
Looking at the facts of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane’s lives, there does exist some possibility the two were more than friends. They traveled to Deadwood on the same wagon train. While in Deadwood, they were certainly acquaintances or at least knew one another. Although Hickok’s gambling friends would later say he could not stand Calamity and disliked her intensely.
Calamity Jane always insisted she loved Hickok, that she tried to avenge his death by going after Jack McCall. There are photographs that exist of her visiting Hickok’s gravesite.
So, was there a romance? Historians can find no solid evidence of a romantic connection, despite the abundance of movies or legends that tried to link the pair.
The Secret Child?
On September 6, 1941, the US Department of Public Welfare granted assistance to a woman named Jean Hickok Burdhardt McCormick. She claimed she was the legal daughter of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. Mrs. McCormick even presented ‘evidence’ to show the couple had married at Benson’s Landing, Montana Territory, on September 25, 1873.
Eventually, McCormick would also publish a book of letters, supposedly written by her mother, Calamity Jane, to prove her story. She claimed to have been adopted by Captain Jim O’Neil and his wife but always knew her true parentage. Although based on evidence from this period in Calamity Jane and Hickok’s lives, Jane would have been working as a scout for the army, not giving birth.
The actual “letters” were eventually debunked as false when it was confirmed that Calamity Jane was functionally illiterate and could not have penned them herself.
Although there is historical evidence that Calamity Jane gave birth to several daughters, only one was ever seen. In 1880, Jane returned to Deadwood with a daughter, hoping to raise funds so the girl could attend a boarding school in South Dakota. A resident of Deadwood, Estelline Bennett, claimed that Jane eventually managed to send her daughter to a school where she received a good education and married.
Closing Thoughts
When Jane died, her last request, so the story goes, was to be buried next to Wild Bill Hickok. Another often-told story is that four friends of Hickok decided to play a joke on their friend by having Jane buried next to him since Hickok was said to have stated he had “absolutely no use” for Jane while alive.
Romance or practical joke, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok lie side by side in Deadwood’s Mount Moriah Cemetery. Together at last? Or a joke Hickok would not have appreciated?
Whether the romance was just a figment of Calamity Jane’s wishful hopes, the legend lives on. Deadwood’s tourism has kept the tale alive, now charging admission to the joint gravesite.
Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok continue to live on in comics, plays, movies, books, radio, television, and western lore. Their names have become synonymous with the legends of the American West, a blend of fact, rumor, and myth.
Sources
Mack, Emily. “Were Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok Really in Love?” Wide Open Country, 17 May 2022, https://www.wideopencountry.com/calamity-jane-wild-bill
Ghost, John. “How the Wild West’s toughest woman ended up as Deadwood’s most pitied drunk.” When In Your State, 5 Aug. 2025, https://wheninyourstate.com/south-dakota/how-the-wild-wests-toughest-woman-ended-up-as-deadwoods-most-pitied-drunk/
“Graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.” Roadside America, https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/66242
“CALAMITY JANE (1856-1903)” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, https://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.gen.006.html
Meisfjord, Eric. “The Untold Story Of Wild Bill Hickok And Calamity Jane Cannary.” Grunge, 2 March 2023, https://www.grunge.com/207966/the-untold-story-of-wild-bill-hickok-and-calamity-jane-cannary/