Qualla: Buffalo Bill Center of the West

Buffalo Bill Center of the West: Introduction

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Burley Packwood, CC BY-SA 4.0. When William F. Cody died in 1917, his admirers faced a question: how do you preserve the legacy of a man who had already spent decades turning himself into a living legend? Their answer was the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association, a modest beginning that would grow into the largest museum complex of the American West. Today the Buffalo Bill Center of the West sprawls across seven acres in Cody, Wyoming, the town Cody himself founded near the gateway to Yellowstone. Five interconnected museums and a research library hold more than 50,000 artifacts, everything from Lakota star quilts to the complete factory collection of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Since 2008, it has held Smithsonian Affiliate status, the first museum in Wyoming so recognized.

Image: Burley Packwood | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buffalo Bill Center of the West: The Showman's Town

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nicole Cranson, Public domain. Buffalo Bill Cody did not just lend his name to this place. He founded the town of Cody in 1896, envisioning it as a gateway to Yellowstone National Park. The museum that now bears his name began simply enough, established in the year of his death to honor the man whose Wild West...

Image: Nicole Cranson | Public domain

Buffalo Bill Center of the West: Canvas and Bronze

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Levimeyer1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Whitney Western Art Museum opened its gallery in 1959 and features paintings and sculptures that defined how the world imagined the American West. Visitors can step into replicas of the studios where Frederic Remington and Alexander Phimister Proctor worked, examining the spa...

Image: Levimeyer1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buffalo Bill Center of the West: Seven Thousand Firearms

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Levimeyer1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Cody Firearms Museum was completely redesigned in 2019 and contains the most comprehensive firearms collection in the United States. The story begins with 16th-century hand cannons and continues through guns of modern manufacture, with 7,000 individual firearms, 4,200 on disp...

Image: Levimeyer1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buffalo Bill Center of the West: Living Cultures

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Levimeyer1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Plains Indians Museum holds artifacts primarily from the early reservation period, spanning 1880 to 1930, with pieces from Northern Plains tribes including the Arapaho, Lakota, Crow, Cheyenne, Blackfeet, and Pawnee. But this is no static collection frozen in the past. The hol...

Image: Levimeyer1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buffalo Bill Center of the West: A Million Images

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gabon100, CC BY-SA 4.0. The McCracken Research Library, named for Harold McCracken, the writer and artist who helped develop the center, houses 36,000 books, more than 600 manuscript collections, and over a million photographic images. The collections support research on Buffalo Bill himself, the Wild W...

Image: Gabon100 | CC BY-SA 4.0