Cody, Wyoming: The Wild West Town

howdy partner my name is matt with we're in the rockies and today we're in cody wyoming where the west is still wild so many people dream of coming to cody wyoming to experience the west i'm looking at you don gogan and matt and here i'm in front of the cody firearms experience so come and join us for a tour of cody in this video we're gonna see yellowstone at sunset learn about buffalo bill cody stay at the hotel that he built and called the irma visit the buffalo bills center of the west where we will learn about buffalo bills wild west exhibition and see james wild bill hickok's gun we'll see mustangs and more mustangs [Music] visit the cabin that butch cassidy hid out in take a trolley ride around town eat a chuck wagon dinner visit a world war ii historical site stare 300 feet down into a canyon from the buffalo bill dam and shoot a gatling gun and we'll top it off with a close view of the grand canyon of the yellowstone all this in and around the town the buffalo bill cody founded the city of cody wyoming is an unusual western town and that it was founded for tourism it was established by buffalo bill cody and some other investors in 1895 is a stay over for visitors on their way to and from yellowstone national park which was set aside as a national park 20 years earlier since we're coming from the west yellowstone will be our first stop on our tour we're going to forego some of the more popular attractions like the lower and midwest geyser basin i'm gonna go straight to the old faithful inn in the lower geyser basin this remarkable building was built in 1903 and 04 over the winter we had reservations to stay here tonight but thanks to covet those got cancelled a lot of people point to the old faithful inn as the birth of an architectural style called national park rustic in the early days the national parks tried to make their buildings blend in with the scenery so it wouldn't distract from a visitor's experience the national park rustic style is also referred to as parkitecture the old faithful inn has been called the largest log cabin in the world next to the old faithful inn is a smaller but still very interesting little place called hamilton's store this was built before the inn but the famous naughty porch was added after the end was built by the same architect charles hamilton bought this building in 1915 and quickly got control over almost all of yellowstone's concessions the hamilton family owned the building until 2002. we wanted to stick around for old faithful to erupt but cody is two hours away and we had to get going we were expecting large crowds since this was memorial day weekend and this travel season is supposed to break records this year but it felt like we had the park to ourselves we enjoyed a peaceful drive around yellowstone lake interspersed with elk sightings this is supposed to be the craziest busiest national park summer ever uh wow we feel super fortunate it feels like we have the park all to ourselves right now we finally arrived in cody wyoming we're staying at the old timey irma hotel the irma was established by william frederick cody more famously known as buffalo bill cody buffalo bill with some other investors established the town of cody in 1895 as a potential tourist trap for visitors to yellowstone which had already been a national park for 20 years by that point it was a stroke of genius by a man who as we will learn was the perfect promoter to top it off he wanted to build an elegant hotel to rival the best europe had to offer he wanted it to be fancy and expensive enough to keep the riff-raff away he named it after his daughter irma we were fortunate enough to get the hotel owner to give us a little tour of the place the hotel has about 60 rooms in the main historic section the rooms have names we stayed in the colonel cody our favorite feature was the sunlight although we also liked the pull down flush toilet one thing we liked is that they give you real keys for your room there are two rumors about the irma hotel first some people say it's haunted [Music] buffalo bill irma and one particularly nasty former guest often visit the other rumor is that the big fancy bar in the dining room was donated to buffalo bill by the queen of england this claim is accepted fact in cody but the curator at the nearby museum seems to think otherwise the hotel has a gift shop in case you want to get your western on so you can fit in with the locals you can also chill with the colonel himself in front of the hotel you'll never forget that you're in cody wyoming because there's a statue dedicated to the colonel or to the buffalo on just about every corner our first stop in cody is the unparalleled buffalo bills center of the west this is often referred to as the museum but this isn't your ordinary museum so there are actually five museums here at the buffalo bill center of the west here we are in the middle and the most i think one of the most popular ones is the buffalo bill museum down here they have the draper natural history museum up here the plains indian museum whitney western art and cody firearms museum for the gun lovers the ticket costs only 20 and it's good for two days and trust me you need two days we will see two museums today and three tomorrow first up is the museum that started it all buffalo bills we booked a private tour with kirsten the museum curator she was fantastic she was so knowledgeable and she really brought to life many of the exhibits we might have just walked on by i highly recommend booking a tour with her from the website centerofthewest.org here's a quick life sketch for buffalo bill he grew up in bleeding kansas where his father was killed for giving anti-slavery speeches so he got a job at a young age as a trail guide helping big wagon parties navigate the oregon trail here he met james butler hickok later to be known as wild bill hickok they became lifelong friends here is wild bill's gun buffalo bill meanwhile went on to work for the pony express serve in the civil war and become a buffalo hunter he won a contest with another guy named bill to see who could shoot more buffalo in a day the prize was rights to the nickname buffalo bill this is the actual gun cody used to win that contest he really came to fame when an author featured him in some dime novels he was featured in over 700 of these mostly fictional books more than any other western figure but it's for his wild west show that we remember buffalo bill by the 1880s the west was won cody started getting into acting and realized that people in the east loved hearing stories about the west so he decided to bring the west to them he created a traveling exhibition about the west complete with bison indians and stage coaches he never called it a show because his primary intent was always educational he knew that to get people there however they needed to be entertained so he recreated famous battles and events that had happened just a few years prior the highlight of the show was the deadwood stagecoach attack this here's a stagecoach from 1900 that is was actually buffalo bill's stagecoach that he bought and i guess that was the centerpiece of the buffalo bill wild west show was the attack on the deadwood stagecoach [Music] cody also brought on annie oakley and the famous indian chief sitting bull to his wild west show oakley who performed shooting stunts was known as little shoreshot remarkably there is a lot of video footage of cody's wild west show but unfortunately no footage of annie's stunts exist cody's exhibition was a huge success so he took his show to europe many times this requires sending all of his actors tents and livestock across the ocean in two full-size ships as everyone in cody can tell you he even performed for the queen of england just about everyone we met in cody seemed to suggest these two had a very close relationship if you know what i mean as for the bar she sent him for his hotel kirsten doesn't believe it happened up next is the draper natural history museum this is one of the best natural history museums i've ever seen i loved how creative they designed it the exhibits ascend from the great plains to the mountain meadows to the mountain peaks bison tumble off the ledge of what is known as a bison jump these bison jumps can be found all around the west moose greys in the mountain meadows and we learn about the yellowstone fires of 1988 and how our approach to firefighting has changed over time we're near yellowstone so a discussion of wolves is necessary wolves were eliminated from the yellowstone region in the 1930s but they were controversially reintroduced in 1995. biologists believe they did the right thing by bringing the wolves back but as i discovered and talking to locals not everyone is a fan of the wolves we'll see more of the museum tomorrow but for now we're going to head outside and back into the old west at old trail town in 1967 a local named bob edgar felt that too many of the old west buildings were disappearing from the landscape of the west so he set out to preserve them this is the cabin of a buffalo hunter by the name of jim white buffalo bill may be the most famous buffalo hunter but jim white was the most prolific he was known as the boss hunter white was eventually shot killed and wrapped in a buffalo robe and left for dead 90 years later his grave was moved here to old trail town this is called the coffin school because the teacher cut his leg while hewing logs and died of gangrene so this cabin right here is where butch cassidy and his hole in the wall gang hung out this cabin was actually located in hole in the wall wyoming the owner here of old trail town bought the building and moved it here to cody wyoming another famous person buried here is jeremiah liver eating johnston he was an old mountain man who married a flathead woman she was killed by crow indians and he spent the next 25 years exacting revenge on the crow indians he cut the liver out of those he killed earning him his nickname liver eating johnston johnston died in california and was buried there but in 1972 my man robert redford starred as this guy in the film jeremiah johnson upon seeing the movie a 7th grade class in wyoming organized a movement to get johnson's body back to wyoming writing letters to legislators and redford himself his body was moved here they had a ceremonial burial and redford was a pallbearer i have more old west stories linked to this place but i'll have to save them for another video up next is our trolley tour this is a nice way to get an overview of the city in its history they do tell a tall tale or two during the tour which makes it more fun one thing we noticed about cody is that it's a storytelling town to become friends and buffalo bill and queen victoria went on to become good friends the trolley tour takes us out to the buffalo bill dam water is scarce in the west so to make this town livable cody had to provide water to the town somehow a dam and irrigation system was a monumental task and took many years when the dam was completed it was the tallest dam in the world at around 300 feet it was also the model used for the hoover dam perhaps the number one thing to do in cody is the kodi rodeo cody builds itself as the rodeo capital of the world it was started in 1938 and they claimed to be the longest running and only nightly rodeo in the world the big event is the cody stampede rodeo which runs over the 4th of july i'm kicking myself because we had to go home the day before the rodeo season began so instead we booked ourselves a chuck wagon dinner through the center of the west and two mules chuck wagon cowboy rich and his wife put on this chuck wagon dinner twice a week cooking steak beans and dutch oven biscuits and cobbler [Music] show that bad boy to me [Music] no jiggles ready this is their third year in their first year they entered a chuck wagon contest in cheyenne and took second place in beans and third place in meat cowboy rich prepares the entire meal from the back of an authentic 1902 chuck wagon which he purchased from texas texas was the birthplace of the chuck wagon when cowboys drove cattle to faraway railroad towns you might think cowboys ate a lot of steak since they were around beef all the time but that beef was for driving not eating so cowboys usually had a steady diet of beans hence the famous scene in blazing saddles with cowboys sitting around the fire eating beans and doing what people do when they eat beans we got steak with our dinner though cowboy rich did an amazing job of trying to accommodate all 20 guests with their steak preference for rare medium or well done but the trail boss made it clear that complaining is not allowed on the cowboy trail same way for medium rare medium i'll pop right through them okay all right day two and it's back to the center of the west today kirsten and her assistant dana are showing us through the cody firearms museum in 1975 winchester loaned its arms collection to the center of the west for display later giving it to the museum the museum claims it's the most comprehensive collection of american firearms in the world interestingly this collection was almost gifted to disneyland whose main street shooting gallery used to be one of the most popular attractions in the park the museum recently went through a redesign to help gun novices enjoy the museum more the first thing you see is a gun 101 section followed by some interactive exhibits other exhibits show the evolution of guns to the present day kirsten explained to us that many people think that winchester 73 was the gun that won the west but in actuality most people were too poor to own a gun like that most had a basic colt or remington and remember old liberating johnson here's his gun these are all winchester guns which is how winchester would eventually market themselves as that cowboy gun the museum has plenty of guns besides winchester here they've replicated john m browning's early store browning lived in ogden utah and is probably the most prolific firearm manufacturer in history it was relatively large caliber because when you're moving west you're not just dealing with white-tailed deer or blackbear anymore we enjoyed some of the fancy guns in the art section including rifles owned by jfk and ronald reagan if you're a gun aficionado you can spend all day in this museum our next stop is the whitney western art museum we didn't need a tour guide for this one because they have a really nice audio tour with a clever little device that was super easy to use this is a must if you visit this museum the museum contains statues and paintings from famous western artists like george catlin thomas moran albert bierstadt frederick remington and charlie russell here's a famous painting called the madonna of the prairie with the covered wagons serving as a halo over her head custer's last stand is represented in a traditional as well as a modern style here's a famous painting by albert bierstadt called the last of the buffalo which gives a history lesson the background full of bison represents the past in the foreground is now death and destruction of a species experts believe the valley in the background is lamar valley and yellowstone in fact the museum displays many pieces on yellowstone including this painting of lower yellowstone falls which we will see in person tomorrow i enjoyed this modern art depiction of old faithful see we got to see it erupt on this trip after all our last stop is the plains indian museum although native americans filled the continent the plains indian tribes are usually what people think of when they think of native americans this is in large part because of buffalo bills wild west show which was then replaced with movies known as westerns a beautiful display shows a tp in summer with the canvas rolled up to provide extra ventilation tribes often migrated according to the seasons and movements of the bison the bison was central to life providing food clothing decorative headdresses and shelter the buffalo hide lodge or tepee is the focal point of the seasons of life gallery the tp was practical and portable this tv is remarkable in that it is one of the last bison covered teepees in existence as bison were killed off native americans increasingly had to find other materials with which to make their teepees so real buffalo hide teepees are very rare and only found in museums now this one is made from 13 buffalo hides and dates to the 1850s teepees eventually gave way to reservations a timeline teaches the basic history of the plains indians after contact with europeans [Music] outside the museum there are many interesting statues such as this one of sacagawea as well as places to eat and that does it for two days in the amazing buffalo bills center of the west it's remarkable that a town of this size has a world-class museum like this one thing you'll see advertised around town is the historic cody murals this is located inside the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints the mural depicts scenes from the history of the church the founder joseph smith receives heavenly visitations brigham young often known as the american moses leads the church to the great salt lake valley where they built a temple members of the church settled in and around cody in the early 1900s to help with water projects latter-day saints were different from other western settlers in that they were communal and settled where they were told to by the prophet as opposed to most western settlers who exemplified the spirit of american individualism our next stop is a world war ii site this is called the heart mountain relocation center after the us was attacked by japan at pearl harbor franklin roosevelt issued an executive order to relocate asian americans including citizens away from the west coast heart mountain was one of 10 relocation centers to which over 100 000 asian americans were relocated about 13 000 were sent here to heart mountain over 600 residents were drafted into the army but heart mountain had the highest draft resistance of the 10 camps over 85 were sent to prison for not cooperating heart mountain is the best preserved relocation center and even its buildings are dilapidated you can walk around the buildings as well as an interpretive trail that provides views of heart mountain in the distance when in wyoming do as the wyomingians do or are they wyoming heights not sure about that anyway we're here at the cody firearms experience to shoot a gatling gun howdy pilgrim we're gonna shoot a gatling gun after talk about safety on the shooting range steve teaches me about the history of the gatling gun and why it ended up being a military failure unfortunately his plan as well-intentioned as it was didn't really work out it's heavy imagine carrying 10 of those it was just too big and cumbersome to get it and its ammunition around it only takes a minute to shoot the rounds i purchased this business has their act together they have a beautiful display on the history of firearms as well as a shooting arcade for kids and a section for axe throwing you can do worse and spend an afternoon having fun at this place we happen to be in town for the second annual cody mustang rally which makes me wonder how the first annual rally went since it was during kova anyway these aren't the mustangs we're here to see we booked a tour with red canyon wild mustang tours to see real wild horses on the vast public lands nearby wild horses in america originated when the pueblos overthrew the spanish in present-day new mexico this also freed the horse and put it in the hands of the natives but plenty of horses wandered off to become wild and have been wandering the west ever since the late 1600s our guide takes us on a long drive out into the sagebrush we're used to all this open land out in the west but i kept wondering what people from the east must feel like when they see a place like this for the first time what'd you think about the ride out here the ride was great right now if you want to get to know wyoming do that ride a lot of flat and sagebrush here in wyoming these wild horses wander around on a vast range so our guide had a difficult time finding them here we're stonewalled again we started teasing him that this was the wild unicorn tour we found this lone mustang who had been kicked out of the herd finally our guide came through took us quite a while and finally found a herd way out there yeah there's uh yeah yeah there's like two of them here there's a mother a mother and a daughter of all our wild west experiences in cody this felt the most authentic we stood there in reverence of these wild animals out in the middle of nowhere with that never-ending wyoming breeze well that ends our two days in cody wyoming but we still need to drive back through yellowstone to get home so after seeing more bison and more strange yellowstone behavior we're stopping at the lower falls of the grand canyon of the yellowstone it's a steep walk to get down to the falls but it's less than half a mile and the switchbacks make it easily doable we met a woman in her 70s who did it she last visited when she was 10 years old and it only took her 63 years to get back here enjoy every moment because you never know when you'll get to return is you

Channel: We're in the Rockies

Views: 378,650

Rating: 4.9043322 out of 5

Keywords: cody wyoming, yellowstone, Buffalo Bill Museum of Cody, Wild Mustang tours, the irma, Heart Mountain, Old trail town

Id: wIj1lN9ChCQ

Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021