Buffalo Bill

UPDATE: in 2021 a group of hikers discovered a metal beetle believed to have been part of the Buffalo Bills collection. The beetle was found about 2.5 miles in on Beaver Brook Trail near Golden

The Lost Letters of Buffalo Bill:

William Frederick Cody, known better by the name “Buffalo Bill” is a legendary figure in the history and lore of the American Wild West. While his raucous exploits have taken him across the country, his final resting place is here in Colorado atop Lookout Mountain, in Golden. The tales of Cody’s courage began with his service as a military scout and soldier during the Civil War, for which he earned the Medal of Honor. And by the time he was 23 years old, stories began to spread and a legend was in the making. Eventually he founded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and began touring across the States and Europe with a large company of performers. With the rise of his fame, thousands of stories both true and fictionalized, circulated and captured imaginations. And like any legend of the Old West, many of those stories involved the heart of America’s fascination… gold.

Though it can be hard to parse fact from fiction in a story of missing wealth and treasure, there are questions from a few stories in the life of Buffalo Bill that remain unanswered. Over 100 years after his death, most of the far-fetched whispers of buried gold and lost treasures have been dismissed. However, to this day, one mystery remains unsolved: the Lost Letters of Buffalo Bill.

Found in a correspondence between Cody and his longtime friend, the writer Emilio Salgari, it is believed that there are letters from Cody to his “never forgotten love” that still remain hidden. Salgari was a writer of fictionalized adventure novels and is often regarded as the “grandfather” of the Spaghetti-Western. He first met Cody on the tours of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and the two formed a friendship that would last until Salgari’s death in 1911. However, two years before Salgari’s passing, there was a correspondence between the two men found in Salgari’s home in Italy. In these, Cody mentioned a collection of letters he wished to give to his “never forgotten love.” It was Cody’s desire for Salgari to deliver the letters during a trip he [Salgari] was planning to the States but was ultimately never able to make. No one is certain on the intended recipient of the letters as Cody and his wife Louisa Frederici had a very tenuous relationship that lasted over 50 years. Cody left Frederici to care for their 4 children as he toured with his company. Details of her life and issues with her husband, Frederici’s Memories of Buffalo Bill (c.1923) shows her long held devotion to her husband, regardless of his alleged relationships with actresses and women in his shows. Despite filing for divorce once before, the two remained together until Cody’s death in 1917.

When Cody left initially, Louisa Frederici bought land in Nebraska in her own name to live with the couple’s children so that if Cody’s tour left him on “a spell of bad luck” he would have a small fortune to return to. Cody often expressed guilt around his absence and alleged promiscuity, leading many to believe that within the collection of letters there could be something more. In his correspondence to Salgari, Cody mentions that he wants to include something “... to make up for being a damn fool for so long.” It’s believed that Cody wanted Salgari’s help to deliver his messages along with one or more possessions of significant value because he [Salgari] was “maybe the last person whose trust I didn’t break.”

Following Salgari’s death, no further mention of these letters or valuables was found from Cody. Some believe that they could have been delivered by a friend of Cody’s before his death, although Cody seemed to believe he could trust very few people in the late years of his life. Others speculate that the valuables could have been stolen either at his burial or later in 1948 when the American Legion offered $10,000 to have Cody’s body stolen and delivered to Cody, Wyoming. Most historians agree, however, that most likely the letters and valuables still remain somewhere on or near Lookout Mountain. It was a long expressed desire of Cody to be buried in Lookout Mountain and in his final communications to Salgari, Cody assures that he’s kept safe “my last things that mean something… until you can help.” Because of Cody’s distrust of those around him in his final days, it’s unlikely the exact location was ever physically recorded. The only clues that remain now are the requests Cody made before his death and a reference to a collection of small iron animals that Cody included in his letters to Salgari. But at least for now, the location and “never forgotten love” of Buffalo Bill’s Lost Letters remain a secret kept by Lookout Mountain.