What was Calamity Jane’s real name in the American Old West?

Calamity Jane’s real name in the American Old West was Martha Jane Canary.

She was born in 1852 in Princeton, Missouri, and later became associated with the frontier towns and mining camps of the American West. Her colorful reputation grew through stories about riding, drinking, scouting, and gun handling.

The spelling of her surname is often disputed. Historians commonly use “Canary,” while “Cannary” appears in some records and later accounts. That variation is why her name is sometimes printed differently.

Calamity Jane became especially famous through her claimed association with Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood, South Dakota. Some of her stories were exaggerated, but her public identity as a frontier character was firmly established before her death in 1903.