Charles H. "Colorado Charlie" Utter
1838-1915. Freighter and friend of Hickok
Charles Utter was born on March 14, 1838, near Niagara Falls, New York, and grew up in Illinois. By the 1860s he was working as a trapper, guide and prospector in Colorado Territory, which gave him the nickname. On September 30, 1866, he married the fifteen-year-old Matilda Nash.
The wagon train
In 1876 Charlie and his brother Steve led the wagon train that took Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and others from the Fort Laramie country into the gulch. Once there, he set up a freight business and a mail service that charged 25 cents a letter. He was also a close friend of Hickok’s, and he was not present when McCall fired.
Burying Wild Bill
Utter claimed the body, ran a notice in the Black Hills Pioneer, held the funeral at his camp and put up a wooden marker. HistoryNet records that he also paid for the funeral and sent a lock of Hickok’s hair to Agnes Lake. The photograph that accompanies this entry shows the two Utter brothers at that first grave.
In August 1879 he moved Hickok to Mount Moriah Cemetery. Wikipedia reports that he did so at Calamity Jane’s urging, a detail that is hard to verify. The plot had a cast-iron fence and an American flag. Later the same year he was fined $50 when his dance hall in Lead disturbed the peace.
Leaving
HBO’s film has him murdered in Deadwood in 1889 by George Hearst’s men. This is fiction. Utter left after the 1879 fire, and his marriage had ended by 1880. He ran a saloon in Socorro, New Mexico, among other stops in Leadville and Durango, before moving to Panama. There he owned drugstores in Panama City and Colon as his sight failed. Ship manifests show him going back and forth between the United States and Panama from 1888 to 1912, and he went back for good in 1913.
He died on July 3, 1915, in Panama City, aged 77. HistoryNet’s account says a friend last saw him blind in 1910, which shows how little of his later life is settled. Deadwood’s most loyal friend ended up about as far from Deadwood as it was possible to get.