[1]For an account of the history and natural wonders of Estes Park,
readers are referred to a previous book in this series, _Estes Park:
Resort in the Rockies_, by Edwin J. Foscue and Louis O. Quam.
[2]A treasured manuscript journal kept by the author’s great-uncle, who
was for many years curator of the Colorado State Historical
Society’s museum in Denver, reports an interview with Calamity Jane
some time before her death which convinced him that the facts were
substantially as they are stated here.
On the other hand, Mr. Will G. Robinson, the eminent State Historian
of South Dakota, reports: “On the authority of Dr. McGillicuddy, who
was a medico at Ft. Laramie, and whose original letter I have, I
would be entirely certain that she was born at Ft. Laramie, of a
couple by the name of Dalton. Dalton was a soldier, was discharged
and went out a short distance west to LaBonte. Here he was killed by
Indians, although his wife got back into the fort with one eye
gouged out, after which she shortly died. Her child got her
name—Calamity—by reason of this disaster. She was not much over 40
when she died in 1903.”
The discrepancy between these two accounts, both studiously
researched and documented by men whose professional careers have
been given over to solving puzzles of this nature with which western
history abounds, is typical of the disagreement among
well-authenticated reports of the birth and early life of this
female enigma.
In any event, it is a matter which is still subject to a maximum
amount of conjecture, and for a much more complete account of the
variant clues readers are enthusiastically referred to Nolie Mumey’s
_Calamity Jane_ (Denver: Privately printed, 1949).