Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is America's first and most extraordinary wilderness showcasing volcanic geysers vibrant hot springs and remarkable wildlife in breathtaking natural surroundings.
Wyoming: Cody the town that Bill built
🤠 Cody, Wyoming — Buffalo Bill’s Town and Proud of It
We rolled into Cody, Wyoming, a compact little western settlement of around 10,000 souls, sitting a respectable 52 miles from Yellowstone National Park’s east entrance. It was, by any measure, a proper small town — the sort of place where everyone knows everyone, the pavements roll up at nine, and strangers get looked at for just a fraction longer than is entirely comfortable.
The town owed its existence — and indeed its name — to one Colonel William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, which must have saved a fortune in signwriting. Buffalo Bill first passed through this part of Wyoming back in the 1870s, during what you might charitably call his more energetic years. He was a scout, showman, bison hunter of truly industrial efficiency, and all-round larger-than-life American character. When he clapped eyes on this particular stretch of the American West, he apparently saw something the rest of us might have missed: the rich soil, the possibilities of irrigation, the sweeping scenery, the hunting, and — crucially — the proximity to Yellowstone. He was, in short, thinking like a property developer before property developers were fashionable.
He didn’t act on it immediately, as one doesn’t, but he came back in the mid-1890s and in 1896 formally founded the town that now bears his name. One presumes he had no great difficulty deciding what to call it.
And he remained — more than a century later — a mighty presence in the place. His name was absolutely everywhere. There were museums dedicated to him, scenic byways named in his honour, and a general atmosphere of civic pride that stopped just short of having his face on the water tower. The Buffalo Bill Centre of the West, which opened in its current form in 1927, was the main attraction — a sprawling complex of five separate museums covering Western art, natural history, the Plains Indians, firearms, and Buffalo Bill himself. It was, frankly, more than enough to keep you occupied for the better part of a day, or longer if you had a particular enthusiasm for nineteenth-century rifles.
In the evenings, there was the Cody Nite Rodeo — a nightly event running every evening from June through August that had been going, in various forms, since 1938. Cowboys on horses. Cowboys on bulls. Cowboys with lassos doing improbable things at considerable speed. It was loud, dusty, and thoroughly entertaining, even for those of us who were more accustomed to watching sport in the rain from a plastic seat in the Midlands.
For the full Wild West experience — and we did feel faintly ridiculous typing that — we headed a short distance out of town to Old Trail Town, a genuinely fascinating open-air museum that had been assembled over decades by historian Bob Edgar. He spent years tracking down and relocating original frontier-era buildings from across the region, so what you got was a collection of actual nineteenth-century cabins, a saloon, old wagons, and assorted frontier paraphernalia, rather than the Disney-fied reconstructions you might fear. It felt, refreshingly, like the real thing.
Cody had also, at some point, been named Wyoming’s entry in MSN’s Most Beautiful Town in Every State list, which was the sort of accolade that looked excellent on a town’s Wikipedia page and probably shifted a few more visitors through the door each summer. On the evidence of what we saw, it wasn’t entirely undeserved.
🏛️ Buffalo Bill Dam — A Proper Engineering Marvel (Whether You Like It or Not)
We were driving along the main highway between Cody and the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park when the Buffalo Bill Dam Visitor Center appeared beside the road. It was open — it runs from May through September — so we pulled over. Frankly, if you’re passing through and it’s open, you’d be a bit of an idiot not to stop. It costs you nothing but a few minutes, and it turns out to be rather more interesting than you might expect from what is, at the end of the day, a very large wall of concrete.
The dam sits across the Shoshone River, tucked into a dramatic canyon of sheer red rock walls that rise up on either side like nature showing off. Work on it began in 1905 under the newly formed United States Bureau of Reclamation — an organisation created by President Theodore Roosevelt only three years earlier, in 1902, specifically to sort out the water supply problems plaguing the American West. Someone had clearly decided that the rivers weren’t doing enough with themselves.
Construction was completed in 1910, which was impressively quick for the era, especially given that they were essentially building something nobody had quite attempted before on this scale. The dam is a concrete arch design — a type that uses the curved shape to transfer the enormous weight and pressure of the water sideways into the canyon walls rather than downwards into the riverbed. It’s the same basic principle as a Roman arch, which the Romans had worked out roughly two thousand years earlier, so it’s not entirely new thinking, but applying it to a dam of this size most certainly was.
When it was finished, the Buffalo Bill Dam stood 325 feet tall, making it the highest dam in the world at the time — a record it held for a respectable stretch before bigger and bolder projects came along elsewhere. It was also one of the very first concrete arch dams ever built in the United States, which gives it a proper place in American engineering history rather than just local curiosity status.
The dam was named in honour of William Frederick Cody — Buffalo Bill himself — who had founded the nearby city of Cody in 1896 and had been instrumental in promoting the entire region. He was already something of a legend by then, having spent decades as a Pony Express rider, Civil War soldier, buffalo hunter and showman, touring America and Europe with his famous Wild West show. Naming a dam after him seemed reasonable. He’d certainly earned it.
All of this history has been recognised properly. The Buffalo Bill Dam is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which is the United States’ official list of sites deemed worthy of preservation for their architectural, historical or cultural significance. It joined the register in 1969, by which point it had been quietly getting on with the job of providing water and hydroelectric power to the Bighorn Basin for nearly sixty years without much fuss.
The visitor centre itself does a decent job of explaining all of this without making your eyes glaze over. There are exhibits about the construction, the engineering, the history of the region, and the remarkable canyon it sits in. You can walk out onto a viewing platform and look straight down into the gorge, which is the sort of thing that concentrates the mind rather sharply.
Visitor Information
- Location: North Fork Highway (US-14/16/20), between Cody, Wyoming and the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park
- Website: www.usbr.gov/gp/recreation/buffalo_bill
- Telephone: +1 (307) 527-6076
- Opening Hours: May through September, typically 8:00am–6:00pm (hours may vary — worth checking ahead)
- Entry Fee: Free admission
🤠 Old Trail Town, Cody — Where the Wild West Actually Happened
We’d been driving along the Yellowstone Highway, which sounds far more glamorous than it actually is — it’s basically a long, straight road through Wyoming with the occasional gas station to break the monotony — when we pulled off to have a look at Old Trail Town in Cody. And I’m rather glad we did, because it turned out to be one of those rare places that actually delivers on the promise of its signage.
Old Trail Town is a remarkable open-air collection of historic western buildings and artefacts, gathered together from across the region. The buildings date from 1879 to 1901, which means they were standing when the West was still genuinely wild, rather than the theme-park version of wild we tend to get sold these days. The whole enterprise was the life’s work of archaeologist and historian Bob Edgar, who spent decades from the 1960s onwards physically relocating authentic frontier buildings to this single site before they were demolished, left to rot, or turned into gift shops. It’s preservation by sheer stubbornness, which is very much the Wyoming way.
Building after building has western history practically oozing out of the doors and windows. There are mountain men’s cabins — rough-hewn, draughty-looking affairs that make you feel cold just standing in front of them — along with a schoolhouse, a general store, and of course a saloon. Because it wouldn’t be the Wild West without a saloon, would it? The bar in question is no ordinary frontier watering hole, either. This is where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid actually drank. Not a replica. Not a “believed to be.” The actual bar. Standing in front of it, you get a slightly peculiar sense that history is rather closer than you expected.
Butch Cassidy — real name Robert Leroy Parker, born in Utah in 1866 — and his associate Harry Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid, were two of the most celebrated outlaws of the American West. They led a loosely organised gang known as the Wild Bunch, and from their base in a remote canyon hideout in Wyoming called the Hole-in-the-Wall, they carried out a string of bank and train robberies throughout the 1890s. The hideout cabin from that very operation has been relocated here to Old Trail Town, and it was one of our personal favourites on the visit. There’s something about standing in a small, dark, rather functional-looking log cabin and thinking, “right, so this is where they planned the robberies,” that brings the whole era into surprisingly sharp focus.
The Hole-in-the-Wall itself — the actual canyon in Johnson County, Wyoming — was a natural fortress of sorts: a narrow gap in the red rock escarpment of the Big Horn Mountains through which only a small number of horses could pass at a time, making pursuit by lawmen essentially impractical. It was the kind of geography that practically invented outlaws. The gang operated out of the region for years before Cassidy and Sundance eventually fled to South America around 1901, reportedly to Argentina, where they tried — with limited success — to go straight and take up ranching. It didn’t stick. The precise circumstances of their deaths remain disputed to this day, which only adds to the legend.
Back at Old Trail Town, there is also a small cemetery on the grounds, which contains the graves of several notable frontier figures. Among those resting there is Jeremiah Johnson — or more precisely, John “Liver-Eating” Johnston, the mountain man and scout whose extraordinary life was loosely fictionalised in the 1972 Robert Redford film of the same name. Johnston was a former sailor turned fur trapper who lived much of his life in the Montana and Wyoming wilderness, and whose nickname came from a long-running feud with the Crow Nation following the killing of his pregnant wife in the 1840s. He was, by any measure, not someone you’d want to have an argument with over a parking space.
There are other graves too — scouts, frontiersmen, and characters whose names don’t ring bells in quite the same way but who clearly lived lives of considerable interest and occasional violence. It’s the sort of cemetery that makes you feel faintly inadequate by comparison.
Old Trail Town is certainly an interesting place to stop and spend an hour or two wandering around the buildings and properly soaking up the atmosphere of the Wild West. It’s not flashy. There are no actors in period costume wandering about saying “Howdy, partner” at you, which is an enormous relief. It’s simply the real thing, assembled in one place by people who cared enough to save it. Which, when you think about it, is rather more impressive than anything Hollywood managed to do with the same material.
Visitor Information:
- 📍 Location: Old Trail Town, 1831 Demaris Drive, Cody, Wyoming 82414, USA
- 🌐 Website: www.oldtrailtown.org
- 📞 Telephone: +1 (307) 587-5302
- 🕐 Opening Hours: Mid-May to mid-September, daily 8:00am – 7:00pm (closed the rest of the year)
- 💵 Entry Fees: Adults $10; Children (6–12) $5; Children under 6 free
🦬 Buffalo Bill Centre of the West
One of the places we’d been genuinely excited about visiting during our stay in Cody, Wyoming, was the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. I’d heard good things — very good things, actually — and for once in my life, the reality lived up to the hype. Which, I have to say, doesn’t happen nearly often enough when you’re a tourist of a certain age trudging around North America in sensible shoes.
Now, before you picture one of those rather gloomy, dimly lit museums where a bored teenager hands you a leaflet and points vaguely at some dusty exhibits, let me set you straight. This isn’t a museum. Well, it is — but it’s actually five museums rolled into one sprawling complex of buildings on the eastern edge of Cody, right there on Sheridan Avenue. Five. As in, more than four. We walked in thinking we’d spend a pleasant couple of hours having a look round, and several hours later we were still wandering about in a state of mild, very happy bewilderment.
The Centre was established in 1917, initially as a memorial to William Frederick Cody — better known, of course, as Buffalo Bill — the frontier scout, Pony Express rider, bison hunter, and all-round American legend who, rather conveniently, had founded the town of Cody itself back in 1896. The original building grew and grew over the decades as more collections were added, and today the complex covers around 300,000 square feet. That’s not a typo. It’s an enormous amount of space, and believe me, you feel every one of those square feet by the time you’re done.
The five museums that make up the Centre are each dedicated to a distinct subject, which is rather clever when you think about it — it stops the whole thing from becoming an overwhelming jumble. There’s the Buffalo Bill Museum itself, naturally, which charts the life of Cody from his birth in Le Claire, Iowa, in 1846 right through to his extraordinary career as a showman with his famous Wild West show, which toured America and Europe — including, rather splendidly, a royal command performance before Queen Victoria in 1887. One imagines Her Majesty was not entirely sure what to make of it all, but she apparently enjoyed herself enormously.
Then there’s the Plains Indian Museum, which we found quietly extraordinary — a serious, respectful and genuinely moving account of the cultures of the Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne, Lakota, Shoshone and other peoples of the Great Plains, with an astonishing collection of artefacts, clothing, ceremonial objects and artworks. It’s the sort of place that makes you stop, look properly, and think — which is more than can be said for most museums, in my experience.
The Whitney Western Art Museum houses one of the finest collections of Western American art anywhere in the country, featuring works from the 19th and early 20th centuries by painters and sculptors who actually went out into the West and recorded what they saw. Frederic Remington, Charles Russell — the big names are all here, and the quality is genuinely impressive.
The Cody Firearms Museum is exactly what it sounds like, and if you have any interest whatsoever in the history of firearms — which, to be fair, is rather unavoidable when you’re travelling in the American West — it’s quite remarkable. The collection spans several centuries and includes everything from early flintlocks to the Winchester rifles that became so closely associated with the frontier era.
And finally, the Draper Natural History Museum rounds things off with an exploration of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — the geology, the wildlife, the landscapes — which makes rather good sense given that Yellowstone itself is only about an hour’s drive up the road.
Honestly, we could have easily spent a full day here — and if you’re the sort of person who actually reads the information panels rather than just glancing at them, you probably should budget for that. It’s one of those rare places that manages to be both enormously informative and genuinely enjoyable at the same time. A proper museum, in other words. Highly recommended.
Visitor Information:
- 📍 Location: 720 Sheridan Avenue, Cody, Wyoming 82414, USA
- 🌐 Website: www.centerofthewest.org
- 📞 Telephone: +1 (307) 587-4771
- 🕐 Opening Hours: Open daily; hours vary by season — typically 8am–6pm in summer (May–September) and 10am–5pm in winter; closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Check the website for current hours before visiting.
- 🎟️ Entry Fees: Adults approximately $21–$25; children and concessions at reduced rates; family tickets available. Prices are subject to change — check the website for the most up-to-date pricing.
🦌 The Draper Natural History Museum, Cody
We rolled into the Draper Natural History Museum — one of five world-class museums tucked under the roof of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West — with rather more enthusiasm than we normally manage before lunch. It gave us a cracking deep dive into the natural history and ecology of the Greater Yellowstone area, covering pretty much everything we were about to encounter in the National Park itself. Bears, wolves, elk, geysers — the full works. The exhibits were genuinely impressive and thorough, walking us through the flora and fauna of the region with the kind of detail that actually made us feel like we knew what we were looking at, rather than just standing there gawping like confused tourists. Which, to be fair, is exactly what we were.
🤠 The Buffalo Bill Museum
If you’ve ever had even a passing interest in the American West — and frankly, who hasn’t, given that Hollywood spent the best part of a century filling our heads with cowboys and tumbleweeds — then the Buffalo Bill Museum was right up our street.
The museum was dedicated to chronicling the extraordinary life of one William Frederick Cody, better known to the world as Buffalo Bill. Born in 1846 in LeClaire, Iowa, Cody went on to become arguably the most famous American of the late nineteenth century — which is quite the achievement for a man whose principal claim to fame was shooting an almost comical number of bison. He earned the nickname “Buffalo Bill” after a post-Civil War contract to supply Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat, during which he reportedly killed 4,280 bison in just eighteen months. Well done, Bill. Top effort.
But the museum wasn’t just a shrine to one man’s slightly alarming relationship with large ruminants. It told the full story of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West — the spectacular travelling show he launched in 1883, which toured America and Europe for three decades and quite literally invented the global image of the American cowboy. Queen Victoria saw it in 1887 and was reportedly delighted. The show introduced audiences from London to Paris to Rome to the idea of the rugged, romanticised West, complete with trick riding, sharp-shooting, and dramatic re-enactments of frontier battles.
Beyond Cody himself, the museum’s collection spread wider still, covering the history of the American cowboy in proper depth — the real working life, not just the Hollywood version — along with the fascinating and rather genteel world of dude ranching, which emerged in the late 1800s as wealthy Easterners started paying to play cowboy on working ranches. Western conservation featured too, which was rather more serious business, and there was a thoughtful examination of frontier entrepreneurship — because the West wasn’t just built on heroics and horse sense, it was built on some very sharp commercial instincts.
Perhaps most intriguingly, the museum took a long, honest look at where our enduring ideas about the West actually came from. Spoiler: it was largely Buffalo Bill’s own marketing operation. The man was, before the term existed, a genius at branding.
🏹 Plains Indian Museum
Now, if the Buffalo Bill Centre of the West had left us feeling a touch guilty about all the cowboy romanticising — and frankly, after a morning of Stetsons and six-shooters, it probably should have — then the Plains Indian Museum was the corrective we badly needed.
Sitting within the same sprawling complex in Cody, Wyoming, the Plains Indian Museum set out to do something rather more serious and, if we’re honest, rather more important than its neighbours. Where the other galleries celebrated the men who rode into the West and made it their own, this one asked a rather uncomfortable question: what about the people who were already there?
The answer turned out to be quite something.
The museum focused entirely on the Plains Indian peoples — the tribes who had lived across the vast grasslands of central North America for thousands of years before a single covered wagon rolled into view. We’re talking about nations like the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Crow, the Blackfoot, and the Comanche, among others — peoples with rich, sophisticated cultures, complex spiritual traditions, and a relationship with the land that made our own look rather fumbling by comparison.
The exhibits covered the full sweep of Plains Indian life: their traditions, their values, their histories, and — crucially — the realities of where those communities stand today. Because this wasn’t a museum that treated Native American culture as a relic, something to be preserved behind glass like a particularly fragile vase. It made a genuine effort to place everything in its living context.
And the timing of all this matters. The Plains Indian peoples had been thriving on these grasslands for millennia by the time European settlers began pushing westward in earnest in the early nineteenth century. By the 1860s and 1870s, the expansion of the railways and the near-total extermination of the buffalo herds — some sixty million animals reduced to a few hundred in just a few decades, which remains one of the more staggering acts of environmental vandalism in recorded history — had devastated the Plains nations. Treaties were signed and broken with what one can only call impressive consistency. By 1890, after events like the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 and the tragedy at Wounded Knee in December of that same year as the final, grim punctuation mark, the old way of life on the Plains had been effectively destroyed.
The museum didn’t shy away from any of that. It also didn’t wallow in it, which took some doing.
What it gave us instead was a genuine portrait of people — not victims, not museum exhibits, not the whooping figures from a thousand Westerns — but actual human beings with an extraordinary cultural inheritance. The beadwork alone was enough to stop you in your tracks. The ceremonial regalia was breathtaking. The storytelling traditions, the seasonal rhythms of life, the deep spiritual connection to the natural world — all of it was presented with care and, more importantly, with the active involvement of Plains Indian communities themselves.
Which is how it should be, really. About time, too.
🎨 Whitney West Art Museum
Of the five museums we visited, the Whitney West Art Museum was probably our least favourite — and I’ll hold my hands up straight away and say that’s entirely down to personal taste rather than any fault of the museum itself. Because, to be fair, it really does have a lot going for it.
The Whitney is dedicated to celebrating the American West — its vast, unforgiving landscapes, the people who shaped it, and the extraordinary wildlife that somehow manages to survive out there — and it does so through a genuinely impressive collection of artworks. Whether the subject is a sweeping prairie at dusk, a weathered cowboy squinting into the sun, or a bison standing about looking magnificent and mildly disapproving, the museum covers it all with considerable ambition.
It’s not that anything was wrong, exactly. It’s just that, as two blokes who’d spent the previous few days being absolutely flattened by the sheer scale and spectacle of the natural history and science museums, the Whitney felt — how shall I put this — a little quieter. More contemplative. Which is, of course, entirely the point of an art museum, and entirely the sort of thing I should probably appreciate more than I do.
So, in short: impressive collection, beautifully presented, thoroughly worth your time — just perhaps not quite our cup of tea. You can’t win them all.
🔫 Cody Firearms Museum
We are not, it has to be said, big “Firearms” people. If we were, the Cody Firearms Museum would almost certainly have reduced us to a state of quivering, glassy-eyed ecstasy. As it was, we were merely jaw-droppingly impressed — which, frankly, is saying something for two people whose usual reaction to a gun is mild alarm.
The museum, which sits within the Buffalo Bill Centre of the West in Cody, Wyoming, houses what is genuinely the most comprehensive collection of American firearms anywhere in the world. Not almost the most comprehensive. Not arguably. Actually, definitively, the most comprehensive. Over 7,000 firearms, with more than 30,000 firearms-related artefacts to keep them company. The scale of it is, to use a technical term, absolutely bonkers.
The whole thing has its roots in the Winchester Arms Collection, which forms the beating heart of the museum. Winchester, for those who’ve led a sheltered life, is one of the most storied names in American firearms history — the company that, in 1866, produced the rifle that would be rather dramatically marketed as “The Gun That Won the West.” Whether the West needed winning, and whether that was entirely a good thing, is perhaps a conversation for another day.
The collection itself began its journey to Cody in 1975, when the Olin Corporation — the industrial conglomerate that had owned Winchester since 1931 — decided to send the collection westward on loan. It was, one imagines, quite the lorry journey. Thirteen years later, in 1988, the Olin Corporation did the decent thing and deeded the entire collection as a permanent gift, which was very generous of them and saved everyone a great deal of paperwork.
What followed was decades of careful curatorial work, building the collection outward from that Winchester core into something that now spans centuries of American firearms development — from flintlock muskets that would have been perfectly at home at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, right through to modern sporting arms. The sheer range of it makes your head swim, and we’re people who struggle to tell a trigger from a thingummy.
Even if you came in, as we did, with roughly the firearms enthusiasm of a mildly bored geography teacher, you left rather impressed. The museum manages the neat trick of making history feel immediate and tangible, which is harder than it sounds when your exhibits are, by definition, things designed to put holes in other things.
Thoroughly recommended. Even for people like us.
Planning a Visit to Cody, Wyoming
Cody is a small but spirited town of around 10,000 people in north-western Wyoming, sitting at the eastern gateway to Yellowstone National Park, roughly 50 miles from the park’s eastern entrance. Founded in 1896 by the legendary frontiersman and showman Colonel William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the town sits at the foot of the Absaroka Range in the high plains of the Bighorn Basin, at approximately 5,000 feet above sea level. It is widely regarded as Wyoming in miniature: cowboy culture, world-class museums, dramatic scenery, abundant wildlife, and genuine small-town warmth all rolled into one compact destination.
📍 Location
Cody lies in Park County, north-western Wyoming, positioned at the point where the rolling grasslands of the Bighorn Basin give way to the jagged peaks of the Rocky Mountains. It is roughly 80 miles south-east of the Montana border, making it a natural hub for wider regional exploration. The Shoshone National Forest surrounds much of the area to the west, and the Wapiti Valley — one of the most scenic corridors in the American West — stretches along the North Fork of the Shoshone River between the town and Yellowstone’s eastern entrance.
✈️ Getting There
By air: The Yellowstone Regional Airport (airport code: COD) is located approximately two miles from the town centre. It is a small regional facility served by connecting flights from Denver (via United Express) and Salt Lake City (via Delta). Travellers from further afield will need to connect through one of these hubs. Car hire is available at the airport, which is strongly recommended given the town’s layout and the surrounding region.
By car: Cody sits along US Highway 14/16/20, the principal east–west corridor between the Great Plains and Yellowstone’s eastern entrance. From Montana to the north, it is accessible via Laurel/Belfry or the spectacular Red Lodge route. Billings, Montana — the nearest large city — is approximately 105 miles to the north-east, roughly a two-hour drive. From Denver, the drive takes around five to six hours.
By bus: Cody has a small bus station located close to the town centre, though services are limited compared to larger American cities, and schedules may not suit all itineraries.
🚗 Getting Around
A hire car is essentially indispensable in and around Cody. The town itself is compact enough to walk around its historic downtown core, but reaching the surrounding attractions — Yellowstone, the Buffalo Bill Dam, the Shoshone National Forest, and the scenic byways — requires a vehicle. Distances between points of interest can be significant by European standards.
Taxis and ride-sharing services exist but are limited in availability, particularly outside of the peak summer season. Some hotels offer shuttle services to key attractions. Guided tours departing from Cody are a popular and practical option for visiting Yellowstone without the stress of navigating the park independently, though bear in mind that the drive from Cody to the central portions of the park is substantial.
Road conditions can vary considerably, especially in autumn and winter. Mountain passes may close due to snow, and some routes into Yellowstone are only open seasonally. It is always worth checking current road conditions via the Wyoming Department of Transportation before setting out. Wildlife on the roads — particularly at dawn and dusk — is a genuine hazard. Large animals such as elk, bison, moose, and deer regularly cross highways, so drive alertly and do not attempt to move animals off the road by driving at them.
🏛️ Things to Do
Buffalo Bill Centre of the West — This is the undisputed centrepiece of any visit to Cody. The complex houses five world-class museums under one roof, each dedicated to a distinct aspect of America’s frontier heritage: the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Whitney Western Art Museum, the Plains Indian Museum, the Draper Natural History Museum, and the Cody Firearms Museum. The scale and quality of the collection is remarkable for a town of this size, and it is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.
Cody Nite Rodeo — Cody bills itself as the Rodeo Capital of the World, and with good reason. The Cody Nite Rodeo runs every evening throughout the summer months and is the longest-running nightly rodeo in the country. It is a genuine spectacle of bareback bronc riding, barrel racing, bull riding, and more, and the atmosphere is electric. The annual Cody Stampede, held around the 4th of July, draws top professional riders from across the country and is accompanied by parades and fireworks.
Old Trail Town — An open-air collection of more than 26 authentic frontier buildings relocated and preserved by historian Bob Edgar. Walking between the structures — which include the original Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid cabin — offers a vivid sense of life on the late 19th-century frontier.
Buffalo Bill Dam — Built in 1910, the dam sits in the dramatic Shoshone Canyon a few miles west of town. When it was completed, it was the highest dam in the world. The visitor centre tells the story of its construction, and the views from the canyon rim are exceptional.
Heart Mountain Relocation Centre — A sobering and important site north-west of Cody, where Japanese-Americans were interned during the Second World War following President Roosevelt’s executive order. The visitor centre and surviving buildings provide a thoughtful account of this chapter in American history.
Outdoor recreation — The surrounding landscape offers outstanding opportunities for fly fishing on the North Fork of the Shoshone River, white-water rafting, hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, and rock climbing. The Shoshone National Forest, the first designated national forest in the United States, is immediately accessible from town.
Gunfight reenactments — A free outdoor gunfight performance takes place most evenings outside the historic Irma Hotel, the grand establishment Buffalo Bill built in 1902 and named after his daughter.
Scenic drives — The Chief Joseph Highway and the Beartooth Highway (the latter rated by many as one of the most scenic roads in America) both make superb day trips from Cody, particularly in summer when the passes are open.
Wildlife watching — The Wapiti Valley corridor between Cody and Yellowstone is excellent for spotting elk, bison, bighorn sheep, and bears. Yellowstone itself, just an hour’s drive away, offers some of the finest wildlife viewing on Earth.
Best time to visit Wyoming
🌸 Spring (April–May)
Spring in Wyoming is a season of transition and reward for the patient traveller. Temperatures range from around 4°C to 18°C, though higher elevations remain cold and snow lingers well into May in places such as Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Rain is common at lower altitudes, and mountain passes may still be closed or subject to sudden closures. The advantage is a landscape coming alive: wildflowers begin to carpet valley floors, rivers run high and fast with snowmelt, and wildlife is highly active — bison calves appear in Yellowstone, bears emerge from hibernation, and bird migration is at its peak. Crowds are minimal compared to summer, making it easier to secure accommodation and move freely through the parks. It is an ideal season for photographers and wildlife enthusiasts willing to accept changeable conditions.
What to pack: Waterproof hiking boots, a mid-layer fleece, a packable down jacket, waterproof trousers, layering base tops, a rain jacket, sun cream (UV is strong at altitude), binoculars, and a warm hat and gloves for early mornings and higher elevations.
☀️ Summer (June–August)
Summer is Wyoming’s most popular season and for good reason. Temperatures are warm and often hot, reaching 25–30°C in the valleys, while the mountains remain pleasantly cool. All park roads are open, accommodation is plentiful, and the full range of outdoor activities — hiking, rafting, horse riding, fly fishing, and wildlife watching — is available. Grand Teton National Park is breathtaking under clear blue skies, with the Teton Range reflected in the Snake River. Yellowstone is in full swing, with geysers, hot springs, and abundant wildlife on display. July brings festivals across the state, including the famous Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. The trade-off is significant: this is peak season, and roads, campsites, and lodges fill quickly. Afternoon thunderstorms are frequent, particularly in July and August, so morning starts are advisable. Book months in advance.
What to pack: Lightweight hiking layers, a waterproof shell jacket, UV-protective clothing, a sun hat, high-SPF sun cream, insect repellent, sturdy trail shoes or hiking boots, a refillable water bottle, and a light fleece for evenings.
🍂 Autumn (September–October)
Autumn is arguably Wyoming’s finest season. Temperatures cool to between 0°C and 18°C, crowds thin dramatically after the Labour Day weekend in early September, and the landscape undergoes a spectacular transformation. Aspen trees turn vivid gold across hillsides and valleys — particularly striking in the Bridger-Teton National Forest and around Jackson Hole. September is prime elk rut season in Grand Teton, with bulls bugling at dawn and dusk, one of the most dramatic wildlife spectacles in North America. Bears are active and feeding heavily before hibernation, making wildlife sightings excellent throughout Yellowstone. Prices drop noticeably after the summer peak, and accommodation is more readily available. By late October, early snow becomes likely, and some facilities begin to close. Timing a visit for mid-September to mid-October offers the best balance of colour, wildlife, weather, and value.
What to pack: Waterproof hiking boots, thermal base layers, a warm mid-layer, a windproof and waterproof outer shell, hat and gloves, warm socks, binoculars for wildlife, and a camera for the foliage.
❄️ Winter (November–March)
Winter in Wyoming is dramatic, demanding, and deeply rewarding for those who seek it out. Temperatures frequently drop to -15°C or colder in January and February, heavy snowfall transforms the landscape, and many roads and facilities close entirely. However, winter reveals a different side of Wyoming that few visitors experience. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is one of the finest ski destinations in North America, offering expert terrain and reliable snowpack. Yellowstone becomes an otherworldly scene of steaming geothermal features set against frozen silence, accessible by guided snowcoach or snowmobile tour — the only way to enter the interior of the park in winter. Bison and wolves are more easily spotted against white snowfields. Costs and crowds are low outside of the ski resorts themselves, where prices peak in January and February.
What to pack: Heavyweight thermal base layers, insulated waterproof trousers, a down-filled parka, ski gloves or heavyweight mittens, a balaclava and wool hat, wool socks, insulated waterproof boots rated to -25°C or below, hand warmers, and UV-rated goggles or sunglasses for snow glare.
🗓️ The Best Time to Visit Wyoming
For most visitors, late September strikes the ideal balance across every measure. The summer crowds have gone, accommodation prices have fallen, and yet the weather remains crisp and manageable. The elk rut delivers one of the most electrifying wildlife encounters anywhere in the world, aspen gold is at its peak, and clear autumn light makes for exceptional photography. Serious hikers and outdoor adventurers are best served by July, when all trails are accessible and conditions are reliably good, despite the crowds. Those seeking true solitude and a genuinely remote encounter with the landscape should consider a guided winter visit to Yellowstone — an experience that has very few rivals anywhere. Spring, while underrated, is best reserved for wildlife enthusiasts with flexible schedules willing to accept unpredictable conditions. Whenever you go, Wyoming rewards those who venture beyond the car window.
Where to stay in Cody
1. Trout Ranch
The tipis are located on Cody Wyoming Trout Ranch which is primarily an RV park. The parking spots are set up on the top of the canyon, but there is a rough road that leads down the hill to the banks of the Snake River, where they have built platforms and installed several tipis.
The tipis are spacious and could easily accommodate a family. We were travelling alone so we had the whole place to ourselves. They have done a great job of making the tipis cosy with a very comfortable bed (there was also a sofa bed) and some wonderful blankets (even in the summer it can get quite chilly at this altitude.) There are no cooking or bathroom facilities in the tipi – on the outside deck there is a grill if you want to cook (or bring your own grill). There is a portapotty for the tipi residents to use, otherwise, you have to trek up the hill to the RV park where there are washrooms with toilets and showers.
2. Bill Cody Ranch
3. Robins Nest Bed & Breakfast
Robin’s Nest Bed & Breakfast sits in a handsome two-storey red brick house on Alger Avenue, just two blocks from the historic centre of Cody, Wyoming. Built in the early 1930s, it has been run as a B&B since 2001 by hosts Robin and Bob, who are well-known among guests for their local knowledge and practical advice on visiting Yellowstone National Park, around an hour’s drive away. The property has four rooms, each with a private bathroom, and breakfast is served every morning in generous, family-style fashion — typically a fruit course, eggs, meat and something baked. A popular dish is Bob’s Upside-Down Stuffed French Toast. Pets are welcome by prior arrangement, parking is free, and there is a shuttle to the nearby regional airport. Ranked second out of 17 B&Bs in Cody on TripAdvisor, it is a solid, well-regarded base for exploring both the town and the wider Wyoming landscape, including the Pryor Mountain wild mustangs and the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway.
More to Explore
