I'm preparing a story for an upcoming edition of the Spokesman-Review about Calamity Jane (real name Martha Canary) and her Spokane and North Idaho connections.

According to an excellent new biography, "Calamity Jane: The Woman and The Legend," by James D. McLaird (University of Oklahoma Press), the infamous Jane showed up in Spokane around 1883 when she was following the construction crews of the Northern Pacific railroad westward through Montana, North Idaho and on into Washington State.

A story in the Spokane Press, printed on Aug. 6, 1903, right after her death, quotes a number of old-timers who remembered her dealing faro (a card game) at her own establishment, a wooden building on Main Avenue.

"While dealing her custom was to peacefully chew tobacco and smoke a cigar at the same time," one old-timer was quoted as saying. "If anyone suggested a drink she was always Johnnie on the spot, drinking neat whisky with relish and buying a return treat with alacrity."

The paper claimed, with only slight backing evidence, that Jane was the "keystone around which all the excitement and life of the new town was reared."

According to McLaird, she also showed up in the Coeur d'Alene mining district in 1884. She brought a few of her "girls" with her to the raucous mining town of Eagle City. There is some evidence that she performed her first-ever stage show in a long, tented ballroom in Eagle City, in which she narrated a "monologue of her life," and then brought out her dancing girls.

She left after a few months because of competition from Molly Burdan, aka Molly b'Damn. Apparently, the miners didn't have enough gold dust in their jeans to keep both of these frontier entrepreneurs in business.

Does anybody out there know of any other Calamity Jane stories from the Inland Northwest? I'm trying to gather as much information as possible for my upcoming story.

WSU Library apparently has a photograph of her in the area...

http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/holland/masc/finders/pc86.htm

Here's a link to the completed Calamity Jane story which ran in the print edition on Feb. 26: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/features/story.asp?ID=118140