Summary: Wild Bill Hickok was a stagecoach driver and Union Soldier, but that’s not what made him famous. This hard-drinking, gun-slinging, high-stakes-gambling sheriff embodied the myth of the old west. Thanks to wild rumors and his appearances in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, Bill became a legend in his own lifetime. Hickok was shot to death during a game of poker in 1876. Dead at 39, Wild Bill left a cultural legacy: the iconic image of the Old West gunslinger.
