Wild mustangs, nightly rodeos, and five museums: Cody, Wyoming earns its reputation

Cody’s rodeos, mustangs and frontier streets

Fifty miles from Yellowstone’s East Entrance, a town of 10,000 people holds a nightly rodeo, five museums under one roof, wild mustangs in the badlands, and streets laid out by one of the most famous names in American history.

Buffalo Bill founded Cody, Wyoming, in 1896, and the place has never stopped being exactly what he built it to be.

USA Today named it the best Western small town of 2023, and once you walk Sheridan Avenue, you’ll understand why that title fits.

Buffalo Bill didn’t just visit Wyoming, he built a town here

Bill Cody first rode through the Bighorn Basin in the 1870s and never quite got over the place. The land sat along the Shoshone River in northwest Wyoming, close to Yellowstone and full of wildlife.

By the mid-1890s, he teamed up with investors to form the Shoshone Land and Irrigation Company, brought water to arid land through the Cody Canal, and officially laid out the town in 1896.

He built wide streets, pushed for tourism, opened the Irma Hotel in 1902 and promoted Cody as the gateway to Yellowstone until he died in 1917.

Five museums, one campus, a full day gone before you know it

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West sits at 720 Sheridan Avenue and packs five Smithsonian-affiliated museums onto one sprawling campus.

The Buffalo Bill Museum walks you through the man’s life with original saddles, buckskin jackets, and a life-sized hologram. The Plains Indian Museum covers the cultures and traditions of Plains Indian peoples.

The Whitney Western Art Museum displays work by Bierstadt, Remington, and Russell. The Cody Firearms Museum holds the most comprehensive collection of American firearms in the country.

The Draper Natural History Museum covers the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and runs a live raptor program.

A cherry wood bar and Buffalo Bill’s original hotel suite

Buffalo Bill spent about $80,000 building the Irma Hotel in 1902, named it for his youngest daughter, and opened the doors on Nov. 1 of that year.

The centerpiece is a cherry wood back bar believed to have been a gift from Queen Victoria.

The hotel sits on the National Register of Historic Places, and you can still book Buffalo Bill’s original restored suites if you want to sleep where he slept.

Every summer evening, the Cody Gunfighters stage reenactments right out front on the sidewalk.

Walk ten blocks of Sheridan Avenue and cover 130 years of history

Downtown Cody runs along the eastern 10 blocks of Sheridan Avenue, and you can park at one end and walk the whole stretch in an afternoon. Western art galleries and shops fill buildings that date to the early 1900s.

The Cody Theater runs cowboy music shows on summer nights. One block off the main strip, the Chamberlin Inn once hosted Ernest Hemingway.

The avenue moves at a slower pace than most American main streets, and the buildings earn that pace.

The world’s only nightly rodeo has run here since 1938

No other town on earth puts on a rodeo every single night of the summer.

The Cody Nite Rodeo has done exactly that since 1938, running every evening from June 1 through Aug. 31 at 8 p.m. Gates open at 7 p.m. for family activities before the main events kick off.

You’ll see bronc riding, bull riding, barrel racing, calf roping, and junior competitions.

The whole thing traces back to tryouts held behind the Irma Hotel for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, so the history goes as deep as the dirt in the arena.

The Cody Stampede brings in the pros every Fourth of July

If you happen to be in Cody from July 1 through July 4, the town goes all in.

The Cody Stampede is a PRCA-sanctioned professional rodeo that draws cowboys from across the country, and it ranks among the top large outdoor rodeos in the nation.

Downtown parades run through the streets, and fireworks cap each night.

The Nite Rodeo still runs alongside it, so those four days stack up more Western tradition than most towns see in a year.

Old Trail Town is a ghost town that never quite became one

About two dozen authentic frontier buildings stand on the original townsite where Buffalo Bill laid out Cody in 1895.

Archaeologist Bob Edgar started collecting and reassembling them in 1967, and what he built is as close to the real thing as you’ll find. One saloon still has bullet holes in the door.

Cabins once used by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid sit open for you to walk through. The cemetery holds the remains of mountain man John “Liver Eating” Johnson, whose 1974 reburial drew over 2,000 people.

Old Trail Town opens mid-May through September.

180 wild mustangs roam 120,000 acres of Wyoming badlands

About 20 miles east of Cody, the McCullough Peaks Wild Horse Herd Management Area spreads across more than 120,000 acres of high-desert canyons, rolling foothills, and open badlands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

An estimated 180 wild mustangs live out there, descended from horses Spanish explorers brought to North America centuries ago. The coat colors alone are worth the drive: bay, buckskin, palomino, roan, pinto.

Local outfitters run guided half-day tours, and early morning or late evening gives you the best shot at finding the herd. Stay at least 300 feet back.

The dam six miles from downtown once stood tallest in the world

Buffalo Bill Dam sits in Shoshone Canyon, six miles west of town on the Shoshone River. Finished in 1910, it rose 325 feet tall and held the title of highest dam in the world at the time.

It was also one of the first concrete arch dams built in the United States.

Both the National Register of Historic Places and the National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark program recognize it.

A free visitor center sits right on top, and you can walk across the dam and look 280 feet straight down to the river. Open May through September.

Theodore Roosevelt called this drive one of the most scenic in America

The Buffalo Bill Cody Scenic Byway runs 50 miles from downtown to Yellowstone’s East Entrance, tracing the North Fork of the Shoshone River the whole way.

Theodore Roosevelt praised it as one of the most scenic stretches in the country, and the route still earns that description.

You’ll wind through Shoshone National Forest, the first federally protected national forest in the United States.

The road cuts through Wapiti Valley, climbs through the Absaroka Mountains, and passes through three tunnels blasted straight through rock. Watch for elk, bighorn sheep, and bears along the way.

The river, the canyon walls, and everything else you can do outside

Cody doesn’t stop at museums and rodeos. The Shoshone River and its forks give you fly fishing, whitewater rafting, and kayaking.

Rock climbing routes run through the granite canyon walls near Buffalo Bill Dam. Buffalo Bill State Park wraps around the reservoir and covers camping, boating, and fishing.

Shoshone National Forest adds horseback riding, mountain biking, and hiking trails in every direction. Three scenic byways fan out from town through mountain and canyon country.

For a place of 10,000 people, the outdoor options don’t run short.

Visit downtown Cody, Wyoming

You can walk into downtown Cody from almost any direction and land on something worth your time. The town runs along Sheridan Avenue, and most of what makes it worth the trip sits within easy walking distance.

Park near the Irma Hotel and work your way out from there.

Shops and galleries stay open through the summer months, and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West keeps regular hours.

Check the official website for current museum hours, admission prices, and rodeo schedules before you go.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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