Self-Made Legend

Calamity Jane blurred the line between fact and fiction so thoroughly that historians still struggle to separate them. What survives is less a biography than a self-made myth.

• Her autobiography mixed demonstrable falsehoods with verifiable events
• She was buried beside Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood, fulfilling her own mythology
• Her grave in Mount Moriah Cemetery is now one of South Dakota's most visited sites

The legend she built outlived the woman who built it.