26 Weird, Quirky and Just Plain Fun Things You Didn’t Know about Cody Yellowstone

CODY, Wyo., July 13, 2026 – Travelers looking for a little quirk in their vacation will be gratified by the abundance of weirdness in the Northwestern Wyoming destination of Cody Yellowstone.

“Some travelers like a daily dose of whimsy in their vacations, and here in Cody Yellowstone, we can pretty much guarantee that’s what they’ll find,” said Michael Wambolt, executive director of Cody Yellowstone, the marketing arm for the destination that includes the towns of Cody, Powell and Meeteetse, a large of the Shoshone National Forest and about half of Yellowstone National Park. “Travelers who enjoy weird history, odd natural phenomena and funny factoids will find plenty of examples as they explore this destination.”

Here are 26 wonderfully weird things you probably didn’t know about Cody Yellowstone:

The Deedles were here – When two surfers are mistaken for Yellowstone National Park ranger recruits, they work to save the park from pesky prairie dogs. Meanwhile, a vengeful ex-ranger tries to steal Old Faithful Geyser before its billionth birthday celebration. Yep. That’s the fantastical plot of “Meet The Deedles,” a movie filmed in and around Cody. A box office flop (can you imagine?), the movie is just one example of the many films, commercials and videos shot in northwestern Wyoming.
Mummy Joe – Mummy Joe is the name of the mummified remains of a man discovered in a cave in Wapiti Valley in the 1960s. At least 1,200 years old, Mummy Joe was found in a rock cairn just a few steps from the main road between Cody and Yellowstone. The dry and cool temperatures of the high-elevation cliff created the perfect environment for preservation. Archaeologists believe the cave had been occupied for more than 8,000 years, making it one of the largest continuously used archaeological sites in North America.
Two graves, one body: The mystery surrounding the burial place of Buffalo Bill Cody continues today. Cody died in Denver in 1917, and after a highly publicized funeral, he was buried in a grave outside of the city. Buffalo Bill, however, had told his friends that he wanted to be buried on Cedar Mountain, which overlooks the town of Cody. Some locals believe that his friends conducted an elaborate middle-of-the-night body swap, returned his body to Cody and secretly buried him on the Cedar Mountain.
Crazy house – Towering over Wapiti Valley is the Smith Mansion, a decrepit, five-story house that looks like it might crash to the Earth at any second. The rambling house was built over a 40-year period by a local, who added protruding staircases, precarious balconies and other odd features, but not electricity. He and his family lived in the rambling house until Smith fell to his death on a windy day when he was making repairs to the roof.
Mountain Man gravesite – Mountain Man Jeremiah “Liver Eating” Johnston was re-buried at Old Trail Town at the behest of a group of seventh-graders, two years after the release of the wildly popular Robert Redford film Jeremiah Johnson. (Note the lack of the “t” in the movie version of mountain man’s last name.) The students argued that his remains belonged to Wyoming, where he worked and lived, and not in California, site of his original grave. An elaborate reburial ceremony, complete with bell bottom-clad Robert Redford as a pallbearer, took place in place in 1974.
Feral horses – The ancestors of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show horses still roam free in Cody Yellowstone. Some 70 to 140 feral horses are found in the McCullough Peaks Wild Horse Herd Management Area outside of Cody. DNA of the horses shows that some of the horses were from the stock of the Queen of England and were presented to Buffalo Bill when he performed the Wild West Show overseas. Several Cody tour operators offer tours to see the horses.
Rock formations and imaginative locals – Weird and weirdly named rock formations make the drive from Cody to Yellowstone extra fun. Travelers can see Holy City, Bart Simpson and Henry Ford Driving a Model T when they drive along the Buffalo Bill Scenic Byway from Cody to the East Gate of Yellowstone National Park. Otherworldly-looking red rock formations tower above the roadway. The weird formations inspired locals to give them equally weird monikers.
Dug up guns – The Cody Dug Up Gun Museum features an oddly compelling collection of hundreds of guns that were dug up from battlefields, farms and forests throughout the U.S. Many of the guns in the free museum in downtown Cody tell stories of their often-unfortunate owners’ demise. For example, there’s a relic Colt revolver that was found in Oklahoma near what was likely a settler massacre site and a Civil War-era Colt revolver found near Deadwood, S.D.
A wall-sized map with a Maryland-size error. Just off the lobby of Yellowstone’s historic Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel is the Map Room, where guests can gather and relax. Mounted on an interior wall is a massive wood map of the U.S. Created and installed in 1936 before interstates were developed and when the U.S. had only 48 states, the map shows the Lower 48 states and their capitols as well as landmarks and railroad routes. The map has one glaring error: the capitol of Maryland is shown as Baltimore, not Annapolis.
Yogi Bear – The wise-cracking, tie-wearing, rule-breaking denizen of obviously fictional “Jellystone National Park,” was inspired when creators William Hanna and Joe Barbera learned that most visitors to Yellowstone National Park knew they shouldn’t feed the bears but did anyway. Yogi’s antics amplified the absurdity of intentional human-bear interactions.
Buffalo Bill…Comstock? While employed as a hunter to supply bison meat to railroad workers, Bill Cody engaged in an eight-hour competition with another hunter, Bill Comstock, to see who could shoot the most bison and earn the “Buffalo Bill” nickname. Cody shot 68 bison – about one every seven minutes, soundly beating Comstock’s total of 48 bison.
A random Big Boy. Visitors routinely do a double-take when they pass a seemingly random statue of Big Boy – the recognizable mascot of the Big Boy burger chain – placed near the road along the highway to Yellowstone’s East Gate. Big Boy was an iconic California restaurant chain with a cheerful, chubby-cheeked mascot in red checked overalls holding a massive burger above his head. The landowner, artist James Geier, salvaged the statue from a California restaurant and placed it on a concrete pedestal in his front yard. The odd and unexpected setting adds a nostalgic – and weird – vibe to the drive to Yellowstone.
A cabin fit for an aviatrix – Before disappearing, legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her husband George Putnam had begun to build a cabin on the outskirts of Kirwin, a ghost town high above the town of Meeteetse. Earhart quickly became enamored of the Wyoming lifestyle and was planning to live in the cabin after completing her ill-fated flight. Visitors can tour the Kirwin ghost ranch and see the foundation of the never-built cabin during ATV tours offered by a variety of tour operators.
Shep the dog and a black-footed ferret – A black-footed ferret – thought to be an extinct species – was discovered near Meeteetse by an intrepid dog named Shep. Shep caught the ferret and presented it to his owners, prompting an investigation and the ultimate discovery that a small population of black-footed ferrets lived in the region. A member of the weasel family, the species has received a second chance at life with the establishment of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service breeding centers. More than 4,300 of the species have been reintroduced to the wild. Visitors can learn more about this species at the Meeteetse Museums.
Cowboy chocolatier – Rodeo cowboy Tim Kellogg really only wanted to earn enough cash for a new bronc saddle for the Cody Nite Rodeo, but instead, he started a thriving chocolate company that has been lauded in The New York Times and elsewhere. The Meeteetse Chocolatier sells fresh-made truffles and other sweets, and Tim Kellogg never went back to being a rodeo cowboy.
A great big dam – Buffalo Bill Cody dreamed big, and the Buffalo Bill Dam is a great example of how he made his dreams come true. When Buffalo Bill founded the tourist town of Cody, he knew he would need a reliable water source. Partnering with the Bureau of Reclamation and town leaders, Cody engineered the construction of what was then the highest dam in the world, measuring 328 feet high and 200 feet long. A later dam modification project added another 25 feet to dam’s height. Although it is no longer the highest dam in the world, it remains today a testament to the spirit and perseverance of early town leaders.
Deadly bank robbery – In 1904, two unidentified men tried to rob Cody’s First National Bank. And although they left without cash, they killed two bank employees. The deadly event was sensationalized by Buffalo Bill Cody himself, and many believed that the robbery was conducted by Butch Cassidy and the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. Eventually, it was confirmed that the Hole-in-the-Wall gang did not commit that particular robbery, and the perpetrators of the crime were never discovered.
Hole-in-the-Wall cabin – Butch Cassidy and his Hole-in-the-Wall gang hung out in Meeteetse and throughout northwestern Wyoming, occasionally robbing banks and mostly just hiding out between crimes. Visitors today can see the original Hole-in-the-Wall Cabin at Old Trail Town.
A Cherrywood bar and a thank you – Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show performed at the Golden Jubilee for England’s Queen Victoria in 1897, and it is rumored that the queen took a liking to the spunky performer. As a “thank you,” she sent Buffalo Bill a room-long Cherrywood bar, which he installed in the Irma Hotel. Today’s visitors can have a cocktail at that very same bar in the Irma Hotel Dining Room.
Stinky waters – When mountain man John Colter explored the Shoshone River near what is now the town of Cody, he smelled the rotten-egg odor of sulfur, saw steam rise from the turbulent river and heard rumbling beneath his feet as if the ground was experiencing hunger pangs. Probably the first white man to stand in that spot, he borrowed the creative “stinking waters” that was used by the Shoshone and Apsaalooke Indians of the region and named the river Stinkingwater River. Later explorers named the spot “Colter’s Hell.” Visitors can learn more about John Colter at the Mountain Man Memorial at Old Trail Town.
Poker church – About the last thing you might expect from a group of raucous men playing poker in Cody in 1902 would be for them all to pledge that the winner of the game would put all of his winnings towards the construction of a church. But these men had wives who wanted more churches in the burgeoning town. When Buffalo Bill’s friend George Beck won the game, he pledged his winnings to build the Christ Episcopal Church, which locals know fondly as simply the “Poker Church.”
Bullet holes and burgers. Located in Meeteetse and in business since the 1890s, the Cowboy Bar has seen its share of outlaws and has the bullet holes in the walls to prove it. Butch Cassidy was a regular patron and was arrested once as he walked out of the bar. Amelia Earhart drank there in 1934 while staying at a local guest ranch. More recently, an escaped prisoner from Arizona spent two evenings soaking up as many local stories as he could shortly before he was recaptured. Today, the Cowboy Bar & Café is known for its burgers as well as its unusual aesthetic.
An inn with a questionable dentist office. When Agnes Chamberlin opened a boardinghouse on the lot now occupied by Cody’s premier boutique hotel, the Chamberlin Inn, her husband decided to use some of the building’s streetside space as a dentist office. He didn’t have a dentist license or any real experience as a dentist, but that didn’t stop him from pulling teeth and collecting fees from desperate townspeople. Although Agnes became a civic leader and often hosted the Cody Club Chamber at her expanding and highly successful hotel, history has little record of what became of her less-than-civic-minded husband.
A civic-minded madame. Cassie Waters was one of the many successful madams in Cody when she was asked to move from the town center to the outskirts of town. She graciously complied. While continuing to operate her original business, she also opened “Waters’ Place” a restaurant and saloon that became immensely popular. She also continued to serve the Cody community by helping to fund needed projects. Eventually renamed “Cassie’s Supper Club,” Cassie’s has remained a popular eatery and watering hole for generations. The restaurant was recently renovated and reopened as Cassie’s Steak House.
Catalog houses. Long before Amazon and Home Depot began selling tiny home kits, Sears Roebuck sold houses through its catalogs. Three of those Sears Roebuck catalog houses remain as private homes today. Visitors can learn all about on a Cody Trolley Tour.
A morgue doubling as a furniture store. Operators of the JH Vogel

Building in downtown Cody aimed to service residents through two phases of their lives…the life part and the death part. The building once served as a furniture store in the front and a morgue in the back. A freight elevator transported coffins to the morgue visitation room from the embalming room in the basement, presumably while shoppers were choosing sofas and chairs upstairs. Not surprisingly, there have been reports of ghost sightings in the building.

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Home of the Great American Adventure, Cody Yellowstone is comprised of the northwestern Wyoming towns of Cody, Powell and Meeteetse as well as the valley east of Yellowstone National Park. The region is known for rodeos, authentic guest and dude ranches, world-class museums and recreational adventures that reflect the adventurous spirit of the visionaries and explorers who brought the remote region to the world’s attention.

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