Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave

Atop Lookout Mountain, west of Denver near Golden, William Frederick Cody is buried. He died on January tenth, nineteen seventeen, from kidney failure while visiting his sister in Denver. The mountain road was buried in winter snow, so his body was held at a mortuary until June.

The funeral on June third drew thousands of mourners to the summit. Cody's wife Louisa accepted a payment of ten thousand dollars from the city of Denver, and a matching sum from the Denver Post, to bury him here rather than in Cody, Wyoming. The reaction in Wyoming was furious.

Local legend holds that residents plotted to steal the body, and the grave was sealed under tons of concrete in response. In nineteen forty-eight American Legion members in Cody offered a ten thousand dollar reward to anyone who could move the remains north, and Denver Legion members guarded the grave in response. Wyoming legislators were still debating the matter as recently as two thousand and six.

The museum opened in nineteen twenty-one, developed by Cody's foster son Johnny Baker, and covers the Wild West show years. A separate track covers his biography. Up here the focus is the hilltop view, the long controversy, and the dispute Wyoming has never quite dropped.