Wyoming, Cody - Monday, July 16, 2018 - Buffalo Bill Dam and Cody

Great scenery heading to the Buffalo Bill Dam.

Most of the reservoir is clean and clear.

Next to the dam needs some clean up.  They have to bring in a crane with a bucket on it to scoop out the wood.

Looking downstream from the dam.  A little boy with the family who was viewing the dam at the same time we were said it was “hot down there”.  His dad didn’t get it, the little boy saw the mist coming off the water and thought it was steam or smoke.

Scenery around the dam.

Dam facts:  350 feet tall, 106 feet thick at the base.  No reinforcing bar is in the original structure.  One quarter of the total mass of the dam is “plum rock” a rose colored granite stone placed in concrete.

The Shoshone Dam began in 1905 and was completed in 1910 at a cost of nearly one million dollars.  At the time it was the world’s highest concrete arch dam.  It was renamed in 1946 to Buffalo Bill Dam in honor of Buffalo Bill Cody’s support for water reclamation.

Buffalo Bill ranched in the area where the reservoir is now located.  He realized the need for irrigation and the need to store spring runoff but such a project was beyond his means.  He and others relinquished land rights to the federal government for the Reclamation Services Shoshone Project on the Shoshone River.

Today part of the Shoshone Project irrigates 93,000 acres of crops – grass seed, dry edible beans, vegetables and specialty crops, malt barley, alfalfa hay and sugar beets.

The visitor center at the dam.

This is one of the tunnels we went through on our way to the campground.  In 1957 a project was started to construct 3 tunnels about 4000 feet in length to improve the highway grade near the Buffalo Bill Dan and reservoir.  All work was through solid granite. 

Down below is part of the original road to Yellowstone.  It was narrow (12 feet wide in some areas) and it had grades as steep as 22%.  The steepest grade we have been on was 10% in Palo Alto Canyon in Texas, that one scared the daylights out of me, I couldn’t handle 22%.  One way traffic was required and rock slides were a serious threat.  Because of the steep grades, the Wyoming Highway Department often stationed a tractor and operator at the lower end of Shoshone Canyon to assist commercial vehicles and passenger cars with travel trailers.

On our way to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West we spotted the local hospital which doesn’t look like a hospital at all from the outside.

The Buffalo Bill Center is five museums in one.  Our senior admission was $18.50 each but you can come back a second day on that same ticket.  There is so much on exhibit so much information to absorb it is almost overwhelming.  I’m very appreciative of the things that have been donated to the museum for the public to enjoy, but I have to wonder where did people keep all of these things before they donated them?  

The first museum we visited was the Cody Firearms Museum.

If you are a gun enthusiast, you will be in heaven here.

Nice wildlife exhibits in addition to guns.

My favorites were the miniature guns.

The next museum was the Whitney Western Art Museum.  I love this bronze tumbleweed by Bale Creek Allen.  He selected a tumbleweed to cast in bronze.  Once it was cast, he sorted the 100’s of little branches, then welded each piece back together one branch at a time.

A 6’ x 9’ oil painting of Custer’s last stand painted in 1899.  The detail in this is amazing.

One of the displays outside the museum, Buffalo Bill – The Scout, as seen from the windows of the Western Art Museum.

The last museum we are visiting today, we are getting tired and hungry, is the Buffalo Bill Museum.  These bison depicted on the Kansas prairie look very real.

Louisa Cody was Bill Cody’s wife.  This is her sewing box and notions.  The sewing machine is so tiny.

Buffalo Bill’s hand tooled saddle made in 1893.

This gun was owned by John Hart who was the original Lone Ranger between 1952 and 1954.  The engraving was done by Ben Shostle of Muncie, IN.

The Irma Hotel in downtown Cody was another endeavor of Buffalo Bill.  The hotel was named after Cody’s youngest daughter and was completed in 1902 at the cost of $80,000.  In its day the Irma hotel was the fashionable place for royalty, business and political leaders to stay in the manner to which they were accustomed.  This wheel of fortune was used in the bar room of the hotel.

There is a campfire cooking demonstration going on most of the day.  He demonstrates how to make biscuits and beans over a campfire.

We decided to have lunch at the Irma Hotel.  

Lunch on the porch enabled us to see the comings and goings of downtown Cody.  The burger and onion rings we split for lunch were very good.  But, I have a feeling the service has gone done from when the hotel was in its heyday.

Browsing through some of the stores in town we found that beads for making your own jewelry were in abundance.

Or you could buy your things already covered with sparkle.