Rockies Caravan - Part 8 - Cody - STR-2021-34

Wednesday, 8 September 

With our first event scheduled for 8:45, we enjoyed a lazy start. No sunrise watching this morning.

The caravan provided two-day tickets to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center of the West (https://centerofthewest.org). The Center is comprised of five museums in a very large building: Buffalo Bill Museum; Plains Indian Museum; Cody Firearms Museum; Draper Natural History Museum; Whitney Western Art Museum. Our Wagonmasters warned is in advance - it was too much to see in one day.

After getting our tickets, we decided to visit the Buffalo Bill Dam & Visitor Center (bbdvc.com) located about six miles west of town first while it was cooler, and do the museum later once the temperature warmed up.

When completed in 1910, Buffalo Bill Dam was one of the first concrete arch dams built in the United States. At 325 feet high, it was also the highest dam in the world at the time. And served as a proof of concept/prototype for the Hoover Dam later.

The project's original and primary purpose was to harness the annual spring snow melt to irrigate crops in a region that only gets 5-7 inches of annual rainfall. The reservoir water is used to irrigate 93,000 acres from Cody to Lovell. As with most of Cody, WY, Buffalo Bill Cody was one of the instrumental people in getting the dam constructed, and owned much of the land now covered by the reservoir formed by its construction. The dam is part of the Shoshone Project, successor to several visionary schemes promoted by Cody to irrigate the Bighorn Basin and turn it from a semi-arid sagebrush-covered plain to productive agricultural land.

The Visitor Center had a video describing the construction of the dam, including the myriad of challenges.  Such as the dam could only be built in Fall and Winter as Spring and Summer brought flooding to the dam project site. The story seemed to be told from a government perspective, and Darrell (VH) had flashbacks to some of the construction challenges on projects he was involved with while serving in the US Navy.

Returning to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center of the West, we started with the Buffalo Bill Museum, an entire museum devoted to William "Buffalo Bill" Cody - from growing up in the Kansas Territory, to his Pony Express years, Civil War service, and the Wild West show he created.

 In 1895, Cody was instrumental in the founding of the town of Cody, the seat of Park County, in northwestern Wyoming. Which explains why most everything in Cody, WY is tied into Buffalo Bill Cody.

We also toured the Draper Natural History Museum. A well done museum on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. As we finished this Museum, we decided we needed a break from museums.

After lunch on a convenient picnic table, we headed for Old Trail Town (oldtrailtown.org). Darrell (H) struck up a conversation with a departing camper this morning and asked him what was the top attraction in Cody for him. The man replied, "Old Trail Town", and also talked positively about the two shows on the caravan itinerary.

Old Trail Town preserves the lifestyle and history of the Frontier West through a rare collection of authentic structures and furnishings - a total of 27 buildings. From remote locations in Wyoming and Montana these historic buildings were carefully disassembled, moved and reassembled here at Old Trail Town by Western historian Bob Edgar and friends.

Old Trail Town also has thousands of historic artifacts from the Old West and grave sites of several notable Western figures. Among them is the grave of mountain man John Johnston, who was portrayed by the actor Robert Redford in the 1972 motion picture "Jeremiah Johnson".

The original cabins include one used by Old West outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and a Wyoming saloon frequented by Cassidy's "Hole-in-the-Wall Gang".

Also on this site is the log cabin home of "Curley" a Crow Indian army scout who helped guide Lt Col. George A. Custer and the U.S. 7th Cavalry to the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, and was one of the only survivors of that battle.

We agreed it was quite interesting. With a dinner and show planned for the evening, we went back to camp to relax. However, before the gathering time to depart to the evening events, Kris did not feel well and we had to bow out.

The rest of the caravan headed downtown for the daily gunfight show held downtown in front of Buffalo Bill's Irma Hotel. In November 1902, Cody opened the Irma Hotel, named after his daughter. He envisioned a growing number of tourists coming to Cody on the recently opened Burlington rail line. He expected that they would proceed up Cody Road, along the north fork of the Shoshone River, to visit Yellowstone Park.

I think we heard that Cody gets 12,000 visitors a day. And Yellowstone recorded its first one million visitor month in July 2021.

The caravan had dinner at Irma's Restaurant, followed by the Dan Miller Cowboy Music Revue, next door. Feedback from those who attended said the Dan Miller show was very good. Something to look forward to on our next trip to Cody and Yellowstone.

Thursday, 9 September 

With Kris recovering, Darrell (H), Brenda and Darrell (VH) enjoyed breakfast across the street at the Best Western hotel restaurant. We then gathered for the Cody Trolley Tour. Mary, of our caravan, made the arrangements to have the trolley pick us up at the campground. 

The motto of the Cody Trolley Tour is "Give us an hour and we will give you 100 years of history". Our guides Rose and Tyler delivered. The tour reinforced the notion we were forming that Cody was, by its earliest design, a tourist town. Buffalo Bill Cody's vision was that everyone entering or exiting the east entrance to Yellowstone would pass through Cody. He even worked to have the east entrance built. 

After the trolley tour, we returned to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center of the West to visit the other museums. We caught the last part of the Raptors Presentation which started at 10am. The Center does two raptor presentations a day, with each presentation featuring a different set of raptors.

We then toured with the Plains Indian Museum. The exhibits were well done on the original Plains Indians, the migration of settlers, and the forced relocation to reservations.

Neither Darrell's were very interested in the art on display in the Whitney Western Art Museum. However, we did learn on the trolley tour that the statue outside the museum, "Buffalo Bill - The Scout", a bronze statue of a mounted rider outside the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, was tied to the Whitney Art Museum.

The project was initiated by Buffalo Bill Cody's niece, Mary Jester Allen, who had established the basis of what would become the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. A New Yorker, she persuaded heiress and artist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to sculpt the piece. 

The Whitney Western Art Museum was situated to frame the statue in the large window.

Fortunately, Brenda had already visited the art museum and taken the audio tour. So she distilled the must-see art pieces to three. After viewing the six pieces she wanted us to see, we came across a great exhibit showing how the large bronze statues are made. All three of us found that fascinating.

As we were getting lunch, an announcement was made about a presentation "Journey to Yellowstone" by Bob Richards at 12:30 in the auditorium. We decided to check it out and were rewarded with an amazing insight to the early tours of Yellowstone.

The Frost & Richard Camping Co. operated in Yellowstone National Park from 1906–1916. Bob's uncle, Ned Frost, and his grandfather Fred Richard took guests (up to 150) on journeys through the park—three trips a year of 18 days each by horse and wagon. It was an interesting presentation. It made me appreciate the modern camping (RVs) way of visiting Yellowstone.

We also made a token visit to the Cody Firearms Museum - the number of guns in the collection are quite extensive. A gun connoisseur could spend a week or more in that museum. For the non-connoisseur, they just seemed to blend together after a few exhibits.

We also visited the Cody Heritage Center, a small museum devoted to the establishment and history of Cody, WY. The museum is housed in the restored Charles DeMaris building built in 1907 when it was the only building in the block until the Park County Courthouse was built in 1912. 

The caravan also included a dinner and western music show at The Cody Cattle Company, Cody Wy (https://www.thecodycattlecompany.com). The food was served buffet style and was excellent. The entertainment featured award-winning musician Ryan Martin and the Triple C Cowboys band. The band has two different shows - one for odd days and one for even days - so you could attend two nights in a row and see two different different shows. As Ryan Martin, leader of the band, did roll call, there were people in the audience from every state except New York and maybe Hawaii. The musicians were quite talented, but we felt the acoustics and sound system made the music a little harsh.

As we wrap up our visit to Cody, the 2021 Cody Country Visitors Guide listed 12 must-do things in or around Cody. And our campground hosts also provided a list of recommended things to do while in Cody. The caravan arranged four of the 12 (Buffalo Bill Center of the West; Wild Bunch Gunfight; Dan Miller's Cowboy Music Revue; Cody Cattle Co.), we did two others (Buffalo Bill Dam Visitor Center; Old Trail Town) and Mary arranged the trolley tour, the seventh. The one item we wished we could do but couldn't was the nightly rodeo, which wrapped up their performances on 4 September.

And if you are traveling by RV, the Ponderosa Campground was a very convenient place to camp - within walking distance of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, and downtown only a few more blocks away. Recommended.