Calamity Jane died on August 1, 1903, in Terry, South Dakota, and was buried near Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood's Mount Moriah Cemetery.
Martha Jane Canary, known to history as Calamity Jane, died on August 1, 1903, at the age of 51 in the small mining town of Terry, South Dakota, near Deadwood. By this point, years of hard living, alcoholism, and declining health had taken their toll on a woman whose life had become inseparable from the mythology of the American frontier.
In her final years, Calamity Jane had struggled with poverty and ill health, occasionally supporting herself by appearing in Wild West shows and dime museum exhibitions that capitalized on her legendary reputation as a frontierswoman, scout, and companion of Wild Bill Hickok. Her death, reportedly from pneumonia and complications related to her alcoholism, occurred at the Calloway Hotel in Terry.
At her own request—or so popular legend holds—she was buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood, South Dakota, directly beside the grave of Wild Bill Hickok, the gunfighter with whom her name became permanently linked in frontier folklore, despite scant historical evidence of any romantic relationship between them. Her burial site remains a major tourist attraction and a lasting symbol of the romanticized Wild West narrative.
Calamity Jane's death marked the end of an era of frontier characters whose lives straddled fact and legend. Her legacy persisted through dime novels, Wild West shows, and eventually Hollywood films, cementing her as one of the most enduring and iconic women associated with the American frontier.