Cody, Wyoming Marks 130th Anniversary in 2026; Here are 13 Things You Didn’t Know about Town Founder Buffalo Bill Cody

CODY, Wyo., February 19, 2026 – He was the most interesting man in the world long before that Dos Equis guy. Although he was best known for staging the epic “Wild West Show” for worldwide audiences, Colonel William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody also entertained royalty, created a newspaper, built and operated a hotel, built a dam and championed the rights of women, children and minorities. And 130 years ago, Buffalo Bill and several friends founded the town that bears his name.

Historians are fascinated by his quirky, colorful life. And every year, more than 1 million travelers visit the town he founded and learn about Buffalo Bill’s legacy as they experience the outdoor adventures and attractions of Cody Yellowstone.

“Buffalo Bill Cody packed so many unusual adventures into his 71-year life that it is sometimes difficult to believe that any one person could have accomplished so much in so little time,” said Katrina Southern, marketing manager for Cody Yellowstone, the marketing arm for the northwestern Wyoming destination that includes the towns of Cody, Powell and Meeteetse, a large of the Shoshone National Forest and about half of Yellowstone National Park. “As we near the 130th anniversary of the town’s establishment, it is a good time to revisit the life and times of one of the most interesting and famous men in the world.”

Where to learn about the Buffalo Bill Cody

Cody Yellowstone visitors can learn about Buffalo Bill’s life and times by visiting a variety of attractions such as:

• Buffalo Bill Museum at the Smithsonian-affiliated Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
• Cody Heritage Museum
• Buffalo Bill Dam and Visitor Center
• Pahaska Tepee
• Irma Hotel

Here are some fun nuggets about Buffalo Bill Cody’s life and legacy:

1. The town celebrates “Buffalo Bill Day” on his birthday. Although he died more than a century ago, he still gets a birthday party every year. The Buffalo Bill Birthday Ball, a long-time town event held every year on the Saturday closest to his Feb. 26 birthday, features a variety of events such as music, dancing, auctions, dinner and entertainment.
2. Cody was an ardent supporter of rights for women and minorities, and he insisted on equal pay for all members of his traveling shows, regardless of gender. “What we want to do is give women even more liberty than they have,” he once said. “Let them do any kind of work they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them equal pay.”
3. He once claimed “the world” as his residence. On the tail end of a lengthy hunting trip throughout the West in 1902, he pulled his six-horse stagecoach to a stop in front of Salt Lake City’s Templeton Hotel and registered for a room. He signed the hotel register “W.F. Cody, Buffalo Bill,” and in the space to list his residence, merely wrote “the world.”
4. He was lousy with money. Although he built a fortune with his Wild West Show, he was a generous lender to friends on the down and out, and he made a series of bad investments that ultimately led to financial ruin. One of the final financial blows was in 1902 when he lost much of his Wild West profits in an unsuccessful mining venture in Arizona. He was deeply in debt when he died in 1917.
5. He tried his hand in journalism. Buffalo Bill started the Cody Enterprise in 1899, three years after founding the town of Cody, which had grown to a population of 300. The newspaper is still in operation today under the same masthead.
6. Buffalo Bill got his sense of fairness honestly. His father Isaac barely survived an 1853 stabbing following an antislavery speech he delivered in Fort Leavenworth, then part of the Kansas Territory. Pro-slavery sentiment in the town made life difficult for the Cody family, and at one point, a plot to murder Isaac was foiled when young William, not yet 10 years old, rode 30 miles to warn him of the plan.
7. He became a household name because of an imaginative dime novelist. Learning of his feats as a hunter and scout, novelist Ned Buntline authored a book called “Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men,” the first of some 550 dime novels about the larger-than-life character.
8. Buffalo Bill’s life has inspired many artists, even long after his death. Mark Twain described his “Wild West Show” as the country’s most “distinctly American pop-culture export to the world.” F. Scott Fitzgerald combined the personalities of Buffalo Bill and Daniel Boone to create “Dan Cody,” a character in “The Great Gatsby.” Film director and screenwriter Sam Peckinpah had Buffalo Bill in mind when he created Randolph Scott’s character in “Ride the High Country.” Even the Beatles found inspiration in their lighthearted, satirical song “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill.”
9. Upon his death in Colorado, his estranged wife Louisa sold his body for $10,000. The publisher of the Denver Post and the city of Denver bought the rights to bury Buffalo Bill’s body. The Buffalo Bill Grave and Museum in Golden may – or may not – be his final burial place, though. Some Cody residents still believe the story about an elaborate plot to steal his body from the mortuary and return it to Cody where he wanted to be buried.
10. Prominent friends formed the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association shortly after his death. Through the association, they secured funding from the Wyoming Legislature and commissioned sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to create “The Scout,” a bronze sculpture that stands near the entrance to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
11. Cody was a Freemason who achieved the rank of Knight Templar in 1889 and 32-degree rank in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in 1894.
12. Buffalo Bill received a Medal of Honor while serving the Third Cavalry Regiment as a civilian scout. Congress later rescinded the medal, as well as all others awarded to civilians. In 1989, Cody’s medal was officially reinstated.
13. He was known as a fearless Indian fighter, but he was also a committed advocate for the rights of American Indians. He once said, “Every Indian outbreak that I have ever known has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the government.”

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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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Media contact:

Mesereau Travel Public Relations

720-284-1512

[email protected]

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