One ticket covers five museums in Cody, Wyoming, and it’s good for two consecutive days

It’s bigger than you’d expect

Fifty miles from Yellowstone’s East Gate, the town of Cody, Wyoming, holds one of the most ambitious museum complexes in the American West.

Five museums, a research library, live raptors, and a chuckwagon dinner all sit on seven acres along the same street Buffalo Bill himself helped lay out.

One ticket gets you into all of it, and the ticket is good for two consecutive days because one is not enough.

Five museums, one roof, 300,000 square feet

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West pulls together the Buffalo Bill Museum, Whitney Western Art Museum, Plains Indian Museum, Cody Firearms Museum, and Draper Natural History Museum under a single complex spanning about 300,000 square feet.

A research library sits inside too. The Center became a Smithsonian Affiliate in 2008, the first museum complex in Wyoming to earn that status.

You buy one ticket, you get two consecutive days, and you’ll probably need both.

A log cabin in 1927 grew into all of this

The whole thing started just after William F. Cody died.

The Buffalo Bill Memorial Association formed in 1917, and the first museum opened in 1927 in a small log cabin in downtown Cody.

In 1924, sculptor and arts patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney dedicated a monumental bronze of Cody as a mounted Army scout. Her son Cornelius later funded the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, which opened in 1959.

Decade by decade, more museums joined, and the complex grew into what you walk through today.

Buffalo Bill’s saddles, jackets and the world’s most famous Wild West show

The Buffalo Bill Museum tracks Cody from frontier scout to the most famous showman in the world. His original saddles and buckskin jackets sit behind glass.

The museum, redesigned in 2012, pulls apart both the real man and the larger-than-life character he built around himself. You’ll see artifacts tied to Annie Oakley and other Wild West figures.

His show toured the world and performed before Queen Victoria in London in 1887. That’s the kind of life that fills a museum.

Remington, Russell and a walk through two artists’ actual studios

The Whitney Western Art Museum holds thousands of works spanning from the 1800s to today.

Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin and N.C. Wyeth all have work here.

What sets this museum apart are the detailed recreations of the studios of both Remington and sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor. You walk into the rooms where they worked.

Contemporary Western artists hang alongside the historical pieces, and interactive stations let you try making art yourself.

Six tribes, one rare 1850 buffalo hide tipi

The Plains Indian Museum opened in 1979 and covers the cultures, traditions and present-day lives of Plains Indian peoples, primarily from Northern Plains tribes including the Arapaho, Lakota, Crow, Cheyenne, Blackfeet and Pawnee.

The centerpiece is a Nez Perce buffalo hide tipi dating to about 1850, extremely rare because animal-skin tipis rarely survived more than a few years.

The Adversity and Renewal gallery includes a reproduction of the 1911 log house of Standing Bear, an Oglala Lakota man from Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

Every June, the outdoor garden fills with competitive dancers

On the third weekend in June, the Center’s outdoor Robbie Powwow Garden hosts the Plains Indian Museum Powwow.

Dancers from Northern Plains tribes compete across categories including traditional, fancy, grass and jingle dress, with age groups running from Tiny Tots through Golden Age dancers aged 55 and older.

Dozens of vendors set up around the garden selling authentic handmade beadwork, quillwork, jewelry and pottery. If your trip lines up with that weekend, plan your visit around it.

Over 7,000 firearms and the entire Winchester factory collection

The Cody Firearms Museum holds over 7,000 firearms, with about 4,000 on display at any given time.

The core of the collection is the Winchester Repeating Arms Company factory collection, originally loaned from the Olin Corporation in the mid-1970s and later given as a permanent gift.

The range runs from early hand cannons to modern sporting arms, with nearly every major manufacturer represented.

Completely redesigned and reopened in 2019, the museum covers firearms evolution, military history, the story of the West and the art of engraving.

Grizzlies, wolves and a Yellowstone you can actually smell

The Draper Natural History Museum opened in 2002 and covers about 20,000 square feet of interconnected gallery environments, walking you from alpine tundra down to plains and basins.

Specimens of grizzly bears, wolves, bighorn sheep and elk fill the space. The displays are multisensory, so you see, hear and smell elements of the Yellowstone landscape.

Kids can work through a scavenger hunt across the ecosystems.

It’s the closest most people will get to the wild country surrounding Yellowstone without leaving a building.

Rescued eagles, falcons and owls up close every day

The Draper Museum Raptor Experience runs daily programs with live birds of prey. Every bird in the program was injured or orphaned and can’t survive in the wild.

Over the years the program has included eagles, falcons, owls, a turkey vulture and a raven.

Running since 2011, the program has brought thousands of visitors face to face with birds they’d otherwise only spot from a distance.

The handlers explain the role these animals play in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, and the birds do the rest of the work.

Steak, biscuits and cobbler cooked over an open fire

In summer, the Center runs an authentic Dutch oven chuckwagon dinner on the museum grounds, put on by the award-winning 2 Mules Chuckwagon.

No more than 26 guests sit down each night for steak, biscuits, beans and Dutch oven cobbler, all cooked over open fire.

If you want something more personal, the Center’s Exclusive Tours put you with a museum expert in a small group, behind the scenes, handling artifacts not on public display and seeing areas closed to general visitors.

Book both as early as you can.

The statue at the end of Sheridan Avenue has been there since 1924

Buffalo Bill Cody founded the town of Cody in 1896 with the goal of building an ideal Western town near Yellowstone.

He laid out Sheridan Avenue as the main street, and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s bronze, “Buffalo Bill, The Scout,” still stands at the end of it today.

The statue was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The road leading from Cody to Yellowstone’s East Gate is 50 miles of canyon and river.

The Center is a reason to come to Cody before you ever reach the park.

Visit the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming

You can find the Buffalo Bill Center of the West at 720 Sheridan Ave. in Cody, Wyoming, about 50 miles from Yellowstone’s East Gate. One ticket covers all five museums and stays valid for two consecutive days.

Summer hours run longer than the off-season, so check the official website for current times and seasonal schedules. If you’re coming in June, look up the Plains Indian Museum Powwow dates.

Chuckwagon dinners and Exclusive Tours require advance reservations.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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