Sheridan Inn: Buffalo Bill's Finest Hotel
Near Sheridan, Wyoming
When the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad pushed into Sheridan, Wyoming, its general manager wanted a hotel worthy of the destination. The architect Thomas Kimball modeled the result on a Scottish inn he had admired. It opened in eighteen ninety-three, and people immediately called it the finest hotel between Chicago and San Francisco: sixty-four rooms, each with its own dormer window, the first bathtubs and electric lights in that part of Wyoming, and a one hundred sixty-seat dining room.
Buffalo Bill Cody managed the inn for the railroad from eighteen ninety-four to eighteen ninety-six. He often sat on the broad front porch to audition performers for his Wild West Show, watching riders and ropers work in the street below. The inn survived into the modern era largely intact. It is now a National Historic Landmark and one of the best-preserved examples of frontier railroad hospitality anywhere in the West.
