The Old West was a crazy and somewhat lawless place. It wasn’t quite as violent as the movies make it seem, but there’s no question that it was a new frontier—quite literally, of course. So there were tons of variables not encountered in the more established communities on the East Coast. With that came the potential for far more strange ways to die. Gruesome diseases, violent acts, and even shocking and mysterious disappearances were all routine in the Wild West as Americans moved across the country to settle it throughout the 19th century.
In this list, we’ll take a look at ten of those bizarre and shockingly common causes of death. If you could be transported back to the Old West somehow (where’s Doc Brown when we really need him?), you most likely would have died from one of these causes. So, the next time you think back to your days playing The Oregon Trail or consider what frontier towns must have really been like, now you’ll know!
10 You Hanged
What It Was Actually Like To Be Present At A Frontier Hanging
Hangings weren’t unique to the Old West, of course. They’d gone on in America for centuries before that and in many other places in the world, too. But they were used quite a bit in the era of expanding the American frontier westward toward the Pacific Ocean. And we may have a more humane view on executions today, at least compared to what life was like back then.
But there’s no question that hangings were commonplace for a variety of scoundrels and ruffians once they were caught by sheriffs in all sorts of rural Old West outposts. There weren’t as many judges, courts, and capable attorneys in the Old West as today. The frontier was largely populated by people either trying to get from one place to another or striking out anew after failing to make their fortune back East.
To that end, getting caught for various serious crimes out west meant that you were likely to see the gallows without any real defense mounted on your behalf. But at least the gallows were (usually) quick and painless, right? The goal of hanging was, of course, to have the impact of the fall break the offender’s neck, thereby giving them an instantaneous death. It didn’t always work out that way… but it succeeded enough times to become a favorite method of capital punishment all across the Old West for decades and decades.[1]
9 You Got Sick
The REAL Disease and Illness of the Wild West…
Seems like an obvious one, right? People get sick, and then they die. Harsh but true. But in the Old West, as you probably already know, there were three specific types of sicknesses you really had to watch out for: dysentery, diphtheria, and cholera. While the first two could be particularly nasty and even deadly, it was the third one, cholera, that was pretty much a death sentence.
Since there was very little sanitation in the Old West, cholera would spread quickly and force many people to succumb rapidly as it went around unchecked via food and water contamination. The symptoms started simply enough, too: painless but severe diarrhea. Annoying and embarrassing but not fatal… yet.
Slowly but surely, though, the problems spread. Next up came the severe dehydration that left you unable to drink enough water to replenish all that you were losing from the diarrhea. The dehydration got so bad, in turn, that it eventually led to kidney failure. Then, it was lights out. Without any sort of medicine to treat the disease and certainly no hospitals anywhere to get care, once cholera set in, it was usually over for those suffering.
Even worse, because the disease spread so rampantly, it was often fatal for other people in the wagon party, too. In just days, whole wagon teams could get wiped out if they failed to quarantine the sick. What a way to go, right? Dying on a dusty trail, all alone, of severe dehydration and kidney failure.[2]
8 You Got an STD
Filthy Brothels of The Wild West
For men living on ranches and running cattle drives in the Old West, times sure could get lonely. They were often only around other men and in dangerous and rugged conditions at all times. So, when they did make it into a town with any kind of the most primitive civilization about it, it was cause for celebration. And that meant going to the local saloon, drinking some kind of incredibly strong alcohol, and interacting with the so-called “painted ladies.”
Prostitution was very common in the Old West, at least as far as where women would appear. It wasn’t policed by local sheriffs, and it was thought of as totally normal for a man fresh off a cattle drive or from doing some other outdoor deed to enjoy a little downtime with a member of the fairer sex.
There was just one big problem with that arrangement: sexually transmitted diseases. Legendary frontiersman Wild Bill Hickok was one in particular who suffered from one later in his life. He was plagued by the symptoms of an STD, most likely syphilis, to the point where he had major urinary troubles and even suffered from greatly diminished eyesight.
Penicillin was unknown at the time, and doctors were few and far between in those rural outposts. So, venereal disease spread quickly—especially when the women working as prostitutes would move from town to town and ply their trade to new cowboys and settlers. If you were in the Old West and succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, you’d likely wind up with one, too.[3]
7 You Got Drunk
What Was Wild West Whiskey and Alcohol ACTUALLY Like?
Alcoholism was a very common affliction in the Old West. People didn’t understand the physical and mental problems associated with prolonged alcohol consumption back then like we do today. And there weren’t any rehab centers or substance abuse treatment options available, either. So getting hooked on drink and descending into a violent form of alcoholism late in life was a widespread occurrence in the Old West.
Take the tale of Calamity Jane as a prime example of this. She was a beloved figure on the frontier for a time and closely associated with Wild Bill Hickok. But after he died, she stayed behind in Deadwood, South Dakota, and saw the end of her life come in a depressing, drink-filled way. People took advantage of the fame she’d gained in the Old West, and she started drinking more and more heavily.
Calamity Jane’s drinking was so out of control that the local newspapers couldn’t even ignore it—or come up with creative euphemisms to report around it. In 1903, not long before her eventual death, the Sioux Valley News ran a curious item about Calamity Jane.
In it, they wrote: “When, to put it very plain and ugly, she gets drunk, she tries to [terrorize] the town in good old frontier style. But that sort of thing has been outgrown with a lot of other things… and so Jane finds herself in the lockup, where she is now… among the ‘plain drunks.’” She died of pneumonia just a few months later in the small town of Terry, South Dakota, not far from Deadwood.[4]
6 You Were Attacked by Settlers
Sioux, Cheyenne & Arapahoe Warriors vs. US Army Cavalry : The Fetterman Massacre of 1866
Dying in the Old West wasn’t only limited to Americans moving west and settling the new territory. It also came about—and very often in far more violent ways—to the American Indians who had occupied those lands many, many centuries earlier. As Americans moved west and encroached upon their land, Indians were cast off into smaller and smaller regions.
In turn, the United States Cavalry and its associated military might took out their aggression on those Indians. A series of American Indian Wars, lasting several centuries, all but decimated the Indigenous populations in North America and forced the remaining members of those societies onto extremely limiting and awful reservations.
Take the Camp Grant Apaches as one of the worst examples of this scenario. On April 30, 1871, a group of white settlers, their Mexican allies, and the nearby Tohono O’odham Indians descended on the Camp Grant Apache tribe in rural southern Arizona. They slaughtered a series of unwitting Apaches as they invaded. Then, they took at least 150 more of them as surviving spoils of victory and promptly sold them off as slaves to groups of ranchers and villagers in Mexico.
They claimed their actions to be legitimate since they said that the Camp Grant Apaches had conducted a series of raids against white people’s interests in the Tucson area. But it was a brutal way to end an entire way of life for a small and mostly forgotten band of Indians.[5]
5 You Were Killed by a Horse
Footage of Bill Pickett in “The Bulldogger” (1921)
Many of the people who lived in the Old West did one or two her
