William F. Cody was born on February 26, 1846, in a log cabin west of the Mississippi River.
By the time he was 15, William had been a bullwhacker, a mounted messenger, a trapper, a gold prospector and a Pony Express rider. He served 18 months in the Civil War as a scout for the 7th Kansas Cavalry.
After the war, in 1967-1968, Cody briefly operated a hotel, drove a stage, and he gained his nickname for killing 4,280 buffalo in eight months to feed the Union Pacific Railroad workers. He became one of the most renowned prairie scouts and received the United States Medal of Honor in 1872 for gallantry as an army scout, but a congressional ruling in 1917, shortly after Cody’s death, caused his medal to be revoked.

Already heralded in dime novels by 1870, in 1872 Cody took to the stage portraying himself. On July 17, 1876, just three weeks after Custer and the 7th Cavalry met disaster at Little Big Horn, Buffalo Bill had his most famous encounter. Cody led a squad of soldiers and scouts in a reckless charge on a squad of Cheyennes. In the ensuing hand-to-hand fight with Cheyenne sub-chief Yellow Hand, Cody killed the Indian leader and took “the first scalp for Custer.” This event had an electric affect on the United States. Cody, the warrior, had validated Cody, the actor. The real drama on the plains brought realism to the melodrama on stage. Legend was now elevated to myth.
In 1883, Cody created the Wild West show, a vehicle that propelled him to fortune and worldwide fame. Buffalo Bill was also instrumental in settling the North Platte region of Nebraska and the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming. In later years Buffalo Bill’s Wild West would star the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the first “King of the Cowboys,” Buck Taylor, and for one season, “the slayer of General Custer,” Chief Sitting Bull. Cody even added an international flavor by assembling a “Congress of Rough Riders of the World” that included cossacks, lancers and other Old World cavalrymen along with the vaqueros, cowboys and Indians of the American West.
Cody died on January 10, 1917 in Denver, Colorado.

Cody is buried near Golden, Colorado at the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave.

MUSEUM HOURS
May 1 - October 31: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
(7 days a week)
November 1 - April 30: 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m
(Closed Mondays and Christmas Day)
Call: (303) 526-0747

ADMISSION
$3 for adults, $2 for seniors over 65, $1 for children 6 to 15, under 6 years are free.

STORE HOURS
May 1 - Labor Day: 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. (open 7 days a week)
Labor Day - April 30: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m (Open 7 days a week but closed Christmas Day) (Weather Permitting)

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