Frontier history is woven into the fabric of Sheridan\u2019s identity. Reminders of a hardscrabble, bygone era are found etched into the wall of historic buildings, whispered about along century-old mountain trails, and recounted at interpretive sites from the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument<\/a> to Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site<\/a>. Sheridan County has played host, sometimes unwillingly, often unwittingly, to cadres of nefarious and notorious outlaws like Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Big Nose George, and even the outlaw Jesse James. Icons, too, have staked claims at the base of the Bighorn Mountains, with the most celebrated of all being none other than William Frederick \u201cBuffalo Bill\u201d Cody.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even before coming to Sheridan, Buffalo Bill had built a reputation spanning continents. Born in LeClaire, Iowa on February 26, 1846, Cody came west by the time he was twelve. Before the Civil War he worked on wagon trains at Fort Laramie, in the gold fields of Colorado, and he may have even ridden the Pony Express. During and after the Civil War, he worked as an Army scout and professional hunter, earning the nickname \u201cBuffalo Bill.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cody inaugurated the \u201cBuffalo Bill\u2019s Wild West Show\u201d in Omaha, Nebraska in 1883 and for the next thirty years brought the American West to audiences across the United States and Europe. His shows played for royalty and commoners alike. Always an entrepreneur, Cody invested his profits from the show in businesses across the west. Business was what brought Buffalo Bill to Sheridan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Founded by John D. Loucks in the mid-1880s, Sheridan by 1890 was still a sleepy little town with a few hundred residents nestled in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains. All of that changed in 1892 with the arrival of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad. Suddenly Sheridan was a boom town with several thousand residents and local industry supplying timber and coal for the railroad.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buffalo Bill first visited Sheridan in 1876 as an Army scout. His next recorded visit came in 1894. The original registry book at the Sheridan Inn<\/a> has the signature of \u201cW.F. Cody\u201d arriving on January 8, 1894. Over the next several years, the Sheridan Inn became his base of operations in northern Wyoming.<\/p>\n