Where Is Buffalo Bill Buried? The Mystery of His Two Graves

Cody residents had good reason to expect Buffalo Bill to come home.

He had helped found the town in the 1890s, invested heavily in the surrounding region, built the Irma Hotel, and maintained deep ties to northwest Wyoming.

There was also an earlier wish attributed to Cody that he wanted to be buried on Cedar Mountain, which rises immediately south of town.

You can see why.

From Cedar Mountain, the view stretches over Cody and the surrounding country. For a man whose name became inseparable from this corner of Wyoming, it made sense to plenty of his friends that this would be his final resting place.

Louisa Cody maintained that her husband changed his mind late in life and chose Lookout Mountain instead. Several people close to him supported that account.

Cody residents were less convinced.

And this is where history takes a sharp turn toward Western legend.

The Story of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Second Grave

The Cody version involves an undertaker, a few loyal friends, an unclaimed body, a nighttime trip to a Denver mortuary, and enough nerve to make the whole scheme sound like one last Buffalo Bill production.

According to the story, some of Buffalo Bill’s friends in Cody were furious that he wouldn’t be buried in Wyoming.

Among the names attached to the tale are local undertaker Fred Richard and fellow Cody resident Ned Frost. They supposedly knew of Cody’s earlier wish to be buried on Cedar Mountain and decided to do something about it.

Conveniently — perhaps suspiciously conveniently — a local ranch hand had recently died whose appearance could be made to resemble Buffalo Bill’s.

That gave the men an idea.

A very Cody idea.

Did Buffalo Bill’s Friends Switch His Body?

Here’s how the local story goes.

The ranch hand’s beard was trimmed to resemble Buffalo Bill’s. His body was then taken to Denver, where Cody’s friends visited Olinger Mortuary under the perfectly reasonable pretense of paying their respects.

Then they came back after dark.

According to the tale, they exchanged the ranch hand’s body for Buffalo Bill’s, took Cody back to Wyoming, and quietly buried him somewhere on Cedar Mountain.

There’s no historical documentation proving this switch happened.

There is, however, more to the story.

The Town Decides to Go Get Buffalo Bill

After supposedly returning to Cody with Buffalo Bill’s body, the men had a problem.

If anyone examined the body left behind in Denver too carefully, the whole plan could fall apart.

So the legend says they created a distraction worthy of the Wild West.

The men reportedly made their way through Cody’s saloons, telling townspeople that Buffalo Bill had been wrongly kept in Colorado and ought to be brought home.

It did not take much convincing.

Soon, a large group of armed Cody residents reportedly prepared to head south to retrieve their town’s founder.

The idea that hundreds of Wyoming men might descend on Colorado to steal Buffalo Bill’s body sounds exaggerated.

That does not mean it sounds out of character for the story.

Colorado Wasn’t Taking Any Chances

Stories about possible attempts to bring Buffalo Bill back to Wyoming persisted long after the burial.

His grave was eventually protected beneath an enormous amount of concrete and reinforced material, in part because fears of body snatching were taken seriously.

The rivalry wasn’t exactly subtle.

Decades later, in 1948, an American Legion post in Cody reportedly offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could return Buffalo Bill’s remains to Wyoming. Guards were posted at the Colorado grave in response.

By that point, the burial dispute had become part history, part civic rivalry, and part Western folklore.

Which, frankly, is exactly the sort of argument Buffalo Bill would have appreciated.

What About the Alleged $10,000 Payment?

One of the most repeated versions of the story claims Denver interests paid Louisa Cody $10,000 to allow Buffalo Bill to be buried near Denver, so his grave could become a tourist attraction.

It’s a great detail.

It’s also not an established fact.

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West notes that rumors of a payment from Denver newspaper publisher Harry Tammen have circulated for years, but no concrete proof has surfaced. What is documented is that Tammen was involved in Cody’s elaborate funeral arrangements.

Louisa herself said Buffalo Bill had changed his mind about Cedar Mountain and wanted Lookout Mountain as his final resting place.

Whether Cody really changed his mind is where the debate gets interesting.

So, Where Is Buffalo Bill Really Buried?

The historical evidence points to Lookout Mountain.

Buffalo Bill’s burial there on June 3, 1917, was a huge public event. Family members, friends, and thousands of mourners saw his open casket. His widow later joined him at the same gravesite.

The Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave maintains that this is Cody’s final resting place.

The Cedar Mountain story survives because Cody had expressed a desire earlier in his life to be buried overlooking his Wyoming town, and because generations of Cody residents have kept the body-switch tale alive.

Could a group of friends really have pulled off one of the boldest body swaps in Western history?

We’ll leave that question where Cody has kept it for more than a century.

Open.

We can tell you what the records say.

We can also tell you that Cody has been arguing its side of the story for more than a hundred years.

That’s half the fun.

Come see the town Buffalo Bill helped build. Visit the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, walk through his Irma Hotel, and look up at Cedar Mountain from downtown.

Then decide which version you believe.

And if you happen to figure out exactly where Buffalo Bill is buried, keep it to yourself. Cody has gotten a lot of mileage out of this mystery.

Request your Cody Yellowstone Vacation Guide and start planning your adventure.