In the fall of 1893, Buffalo Bill Cody “departed Chicago with a million in cash and the irony of the last laugh,” writes Matt Braun in his article “Buffalo Bill Goosed the World’s Fair” in the May 2014 issue of True West magazine. “He never paid a red cent to Burnham or the World’s Columbian Exposition,”
The article offers an account of how Nate Salsbury, Cody’s partner and business manager, requested a concession from the Columbian Exposition’s Committee of Ways and Means. Balking at the idea of paying the Exposition fifty percent of their gross proceeds, Salsbury secured a large lot adjacent to the fairgrounds and set up Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World. The competitor began performing in their 18,000-seat arena on April 3, 1893, four weeks before the Opening Day of the Columbian Exposition.
Braun writes that Daniel Burnham , upon being selected as the Chief of Construction for the Exposition in 1890, wrote a prophetic entry in his daily journal: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood….” These words, long attributed to Burnham, were only recently (re)discovered in print by Chicago historian Adam Selzter. The original source of Burnham’s famous phrase is the October 15, 1910, issue of the Chicago Record-Herald newspaper–not the 1893 World’s Fair.
An advertisement for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show from the May 21, 1893, issue of the Chicago Inter Ocean.