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Cody, Wyoming... The Real Wild Wild West
By Margaret Wimborne
Cody. It would probably please Buffalo Bill, this town that celebrates everything wild about the West. But then that is just what he had in mind when he founded Cody in 1896 and promoted it so that royalty and ruffians alike would come and see the Wild West for themselves.
Hundreds came, lured by Col. William F. Cody's stories about Indian ambushes, buffalo hunts, and the cowboy life. Today, they still come, packed into station wagons, riding high in RVs, or driving leisurely across the country in Cadillacs.
They come for the nightly rodeos and afternoon gunfights. But most of all they come to learn about the Old West and about Cody, or Buffalo Bill, the man who claimed he had tamed the West.
Buffalo Bill became famous as a Pony Express rider, a buffalo hunter, an army scout, and a showman. He brought those exploits to life in the late 1800s with his touring Wild West Show, which traveled the country and the world.
"There are different reasons to recognize and pay him tribute," said Claudia Wade, who has spent 12 years promoting Cody with the Clark County Travel Council.
The Buffalo Bill Historical Center pays homage to Cody. Besides a museum commemorating Buffalo Bill's life, the center houses three other museums. The Whitney Gallery of Western Art displays work by some of the West's most famous artists and sculptors, including Remington and Moran. Indian art and artifacts are showcased in the Plains Indian Museum, while the Cody Firearms Museum, which is said to contain the world's most comprehensive firearms collections, traces the development of the gun through the ages.
But there's more to Cody than the museum, which opened 10 years after Cody's death in 1917. The whole town is committed to keeping the Old West alive.
Every summer night there's a rodeo just outside town. The rodeo, with some of the highest prizes on the circuit, attracts cowboys from around the country and Canada, Wade said. The bull riding and bronc bustin' gives people an appreciation for the stamina needed to work this land.
"Cowboys every day had to have these skills and use them every day," Wade said. Rodeo tickets sometimes sell out, so it's a good idea to buy them in town during the day or order them in advance.
Old Trail Town, near the rodeo grounds, gives people who wander through the authentic Old West buildings an understanding of what it takes to live on this land. The town features historic buildings (among them a cabin used by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) that were dismantled and rebuilt on Cody's outskirts.
"It was pretty rusty and rugged," Wade said. "You survived and struggled and settled the land."
Downtown Cody is lined with 100-year-old buildings, including the Hotel Irma. The luxury hotel Cody built after founding the town, and named for Cody's daughter, is on the National Registry of Historic Places.
To learn a little about the history of the buildings, pick up a historic walking-tour guide from the Cody Chamber of Commerce. Walking the streets in search of, say, the building that housed the Cody Trading Company, will make those rambles through gift shops, book stores, and mercantiles all the more interesting.
The town is also filled with cowboys. Some are from nearby ranches. Others are there to quiet the rabble during staged afternoon gunfights in front of the Hotel Irma.
These remnants of the Old West are the reasons about one million people pass through this town atop caramel-colored bluffs. But you can enjoy the town without the crowds in May and early June and again in September.
Most travelers are headed to Yellowstone National Park or are on their way back home, but that's OK. Its proximity to Yellowstone's east entrance is one of the reasons Buffalo Bill settled in Cody. He took those who trekked across the country, enthralled by his tales, to the nation's first national park. It was part of the Wild West he loved and wanted everyone to see.
"He was one of the few individuals who settled in the frontier and claimed it for himself," Wade said.
Writer Margaret Wimborne is city editor of the Idaho Falls Post Register.
INFORMATION
BUFFALO BILL'S YELLOWSTONE COUNTRY For all you information on Cody and local attractions, Yellowstone Park and the Cody area. 836 Sheridan Avenue, Cody across from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. 307-587-2297
WEB SITE
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