Oakley: Where Buffalo Bill Got His Name

In the spring of eighteen sixty-eight, a contract hunter named William F. Cody was killing bison to feed the Kansas Pacific Railroad crews laying track across western Kansas. About ten miles west of what is now Oakley, a contest was staged to settle a dispute: two men both called Buffalo Bill would hunt side by side and the higher total would win the name outright.

Cody dropped roughly seventy animals to his rival's roughly fifty in a single day, and the legend of Buffalo Bill was officially born. The town of Oakley was founded in eighteen eighty-four as a supply point for the surrounding ranch country of Gove County. Today a twice-life-size bronze sculpture at the Buffalo Bill Cultural Center commemorates the contest that gave one of the West's most famous figures his permanent identity.