Buffalo Bill Museum

After a couple of days in Yellowstone, we packed up the motor coach and began the drive to Cody, Wyoming. We made a couple of fun stops along the way, our first stop was at Buffalo Bill's original hunting lodge.

Historic Pahaska Pahaska Tepee’s original lodge was built by Colonel William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody at the turn of the century. Buffalo Bill frequented the area on hunting trips in the 1880’s. Twenty years later he returned and led the development of Yellowstone’s East Entrance.

Pahaska means "long hair" which was a nickname given to William Cody by the Native Americans.

The tour guide at the lodge is pretty well known, at sure looks a lot like Buffalo Bill.

After our stop at Pahaska Tepee, we had a long drive to get to Cody. Our tour guide had all sorts of fun activities to help keep all the kids entertained on the drive. One of our favorites was this funny drawing game. We were each paired up with a partner and we would take turns drawing parts of a moose, we had about 30 per turn to draw the part our tour guide told us to and then we would switch with our partner. It resulted in some pretty silly pictures!

After the game, all partnerships were awarded a can of moose poop as a prize.

Our next stop was at the impressive Buffalo Bill Center of the West. 

 The Buffalo Bill Museum invites visitors to explore the myriad facets of a unique individual—William F. Cody (1846 – 1917). It was through the persona of “Buffalo Bill,” and the agency of the traveling outdoor show, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, that Cody brought the West to the world and the world to the West. Yet the full measure of the figure behind that persona deserves to be better-known and appreciated. Apart from being a showman, actor, hunter, and western hero, Cody had many identities: teamster, Pony Express rider, Civil War veteran, Congressional medal-of-honor recipient, outdoorsman, and onetime hotelkeeper. He was a town-builder, a philanthropist, an entrepreneur, and a visionary. He was also a son, a sibling, a husband, and a parent. A “man of many parts,” the real-life person who was William F. Cody turns out, when you get right down to it, to have been pretty much like the rest of us: ambitious, lonely, conflicted, searching for meaning, struggling to make ends meet, constantly facing adversity—in short, someone genuinely human and authentic. 

In addition to documenting the life and interests of William F. Cody, and the history and operations of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, the museum’s collection interprets the history of the American cowboy, dude ranching, western conservation, frontier entrepreneurship, and the source of our concepts about the West.

William with his wife and two daughters

William's daughter, Irma, loved to play the violin.

There is a bird sanctuary in the courtyard of the museum. We had just missed the birdshot, but this beautiful eagle was still our enjoying the cool weather.

V had a fun time exploring the tepees in front of the museum, she was also in the mood for a little photo shoot. She is so adorable.

We also found wild bunnies hopping through the landscaping, enjoying a lunch of fresh grass.