“Calamity Jane: The Woman and the Legend,” by James D. McLaird (University of Oklahoma, 384 pages, $29.95)
Debunking a legend isn’t easy. We Westerners like our myths, even if the truth is sometimes tweaked. In the case of Calamity Jane, the truth isn’t stretched, it’s just plain ignored. Most stories spread by early writers as well as Calamity Jane herself are pure fantasy. Others have a modicum of truth but are so embroidered that it’s hard to separate fact from fiction.
That’s the daunting challenge for historian James D. McLaird. With a good bit of sleuthing as well as researching in dusty archives, he takes us step by step through Calamity Jane’s life, in an attempt to reconstruct this Western heroine’s biography and to tell how she became an icon of Western history.
Certain facts are indisputable. Martha Canary, Calamity’s real name, was orphaned at a young age. She pretty much raised herself and possibly a brother, and as a result, she was resourceful and independent. Calamity was a prostitute part of the time and a lush most of the time. She dressed in men’s clothes and could ride and shoot with the best of them. She could cuss better than most of them. Calamity was also a decent soul who tended the sick and helped out old friends.
But here’s where the legend breaks down: She wasn’t an Army scout, as she claimed. Instead she was a camp follower and, when discovered by the brass, was generally asked to leave. She never rescued the Deadwood stage. As for her supposed love affair with Wild Bill Hickok, forget it. The two knew each other, but not for long and not well. Despite the many stories about how Martha became Calamity Jane, nobody knows for certain where the nickname came from. In fact, there were a couple of other Calamity Janes in the West, one of them in Denver.
So why has she become one of the primary female figures of Western history? For one thing, she was the heroine of the 33 “Deadwood Dick” dime novels, which came out in the 1870s and 1880s. She was portrayed as larger than life – loyal, honest, brave. She married Deadwood Dick in one of the novels, and in the last of the series, the two died together, leaving their son, Deadwood Dick Jr., to carry on their adventures.
McLaird says that Martha herself encouraged the tall tales by shading the truth or telling outrageous stories about herself. In the 1920s, when America was rediscovering its Wild West past, movies and books gave fictional accounts of Calamity Jane, especially in regard to her relationship with Hickok.
McLaird does an excellent job of separating fact from fiction, and just as important, he tells why so many readers don’t care. We don’t give up our legends easily.
“Crestmoor Park Heritage: A History and Guide to a Denver Neighborhood,” by Alice Millett Bakemeier (Heritage Press, $25)
Crestmoor Park may not be as well known as Country Club and Hilltop, the subjects of Alice Millett Bakemeier’s two previous books on Denver neighborhoods, but it still is one of the nicest residential areas of Denver.
It didn’t start out that way. In fact, the neighborhood’s first developer was something of a charlatan, whose bad debts and Byzantine business dealings left the area tainted. But in 1936, prominent real estate men Van Holt Garrett and Donald Bromfield, sons-in-law of Sen. Lawrence Phipps, put together Crestmoor. It was to be a first-class neighborhood in which both architectural styles and residents were tightly controlled; the covenants contained a whites-only clause.
Crestmoor, which lies between East Sixth and Alameda avenues and South Holly and Kearney streets, was never Denver’s most exclusive neighborhood, although it was plenty good enough for descendents of Denver’s first families.
“Crestmoor Park Heritage” is nicely illustrated with maps and photographs. The cover is a Barbara Froula watercolor. Froula’s art, which appears on some 20 Historic Denver posters, has become a sort of stamp of approval for books on Denver architecture.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver-based novelist.
