A member of the Forepaugh Circus came to Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the autumn of 1887. Rumour had it that the stranger was secretly planning an expedition as an agent for the circus, which at the time was one of the biggest in America.
In order to put a crazy man in a cage for his freak show, he set out to capture him from the isolated Wyoming Territory. This circus man was determined to succeed where ranchers and cowboys had failed.
P.T. Barnum’s rival, the Forepaugh Circus, required this crazy man for its expanding menagerie. An elderly sailor who had pleaded to be put in a cage while he collected himself before assuming the role of a “wild man” for the circus was Barnum’s wild man.
If rumours were to be believed, the legendary creature that the locals called “Bud” was the real thing, making the Wyoming wild man that the Forepaugh Circus agent desired much more spectacular.
By then, the untamed individual had been roaming freely in the Chugwater Valley for two years, roughly fifty miles north of Cheyenne.
Bud, the Wild Man of Wyoming
The Chugwater “savage,” according to Cheyenne Leader reporters, was very tall.
According to one reporter, “Cowboys and others who have been favoured with a view of the creature assert that he is between 7 and 12 feet tall.” “While some insist that he is at least 6 feet taller, no one will settle for a figure that is even an inch shorter than 7 feet.”
Bud, they all agreed, had a thick coat of long black hair and wore no clothes.
According to the story, “the outcast clearly possesses animal cunning of a very high order, despite seemingly lacking all reasoning faculties that ordinary men possess.”
Bud was thought to have resided in a cave surrounded by hills near the Cheyenne & Northern railroad’s Chugwater Station. Cowhands, ranchmen, prospectors, and surveyors had all searched but been unable to find the wild man’s retreat.
The reporter wrote, “His actions are sometimes ghost-like and supernatural.” His favourite places to walk during stormy weather are the tops of the well-known “castle walls.”
Locals reported that Bud could be seen peacefully walking over the natural parapets when the wind was blowing through Chugwater Valley at a high speed.
The Cowboy Versus The Wild Man
The first year that Bud was spotted, a young cowboy named Charles Walters was working at a ranch near Chugwater Valley.
After hearing all of the reports about this wild man of the mountains, Walters organised a group of other young cowboys to capture Bud. The hunters were fully prepared for the chase and found Bud quickly.
The wild man was on foot, and they assumed he would be easy to capture. Instead, the wild man outpaced the horses.
“Walters was disgusted to see himself foiled and ordered his men to pursue the creature on foot,” eyewitnesses later stated. “Members of the posse paired off and spent the greater part of two days in hunting Bud.”
Bud would allow his enemies to approach within a few hundred yards before taking off like a shot.
The young cowboys attempted to surround the creature, but when it seemed impossible for Bud to escape, he vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared.
They failed to capture Bud and returned to the ranch defeated.
This gnawed at Walters.
He had no idea whether Bud was a spirit or made of flesh and blood, and it bothered him that this wild man lived only a few miles from the ranch Walters was working on.
Round 2
One day, he quietly declared that he would take a shot at the mysterious inhabitant of Chugwater Valley and finally determine which world Bud belonged to.
Walters chose to embark on his mission alone, armed with a long-range rifle and a six-shooter. He set off for the mountains on foot.
When Walters returned, he was a different man.
He never wanted to talk about what happened out there with Bud alone, but he was reportedly as nervous as if he had met old Satan himself. Finally, he told the story.
Walters claimed he shot at the wild man while Bud stood silhouetted on a rock.
Bud let out a wild shriek as the shot missed. He shook his fist at the marksman, advanced 500 yards towards him in a menacing manner, then turned and ran just as Walters was about to fire a second shot.
The incident had such an impact on Walters that he quickly left the country, declaring prior to his departure that he knew Bud would start raiding ranches and murdering settlers in their beds.
Even the Cheyenne reporter didn’t believe it because the wild man had never been aggressive.
The following year, the circus man appeared, and Cheyenne residents were confident he would succeed where Walters had failed. They’d finally know who—or what—Bud was.
The party tasked with capturing Bud for the circus left Cheyenne around November 1, 1887, and was never heard from again.
The Forepaugh Circus appears to have never captured the Wyoming wild man, and its attempt to do so may have been lost in time, as is the true identity of the Chugwater wild man known as Bud.
