Buffalo Bill Center of the West
Five distinct museums share one Cody campus, letting you compare Buffalo Bill history, Plains Indian cultures, firearms, western art, and Greater Yellowstone wildlife without reducing the West to a single story.
Artwork inspired by James Bama
The Center of the West is really five museums and a research library, each approaching the American West through different evidence. The Buffalo Bill Museum separates William F. Cody’s life from the celebrity he manufactured; the Plains Indian Museum centers the histories and living cultures of Native peoples of the Plains; and the Draper Natural History Museum follows Greater Yellowstone ecosystems from alpine country to basin grassland.
The other two wings reward equally different kinds of looking. The Cody Firearms Museum holds more than 10,000 objects and is strongest when read as a history of design, labor, use, and regulation rather than a parade of weapons. The Whitney Western Art Museum moves from familiar frontier imagery into modern and contemporary work, making it possible to see how artists—including Wyoming-based James Bama—kept revising what “the West” could mean.
- Structure
- Five museums under one roof
- Strength
- Art, cultures, history, wildlife, firearms
- Allow
- 5–7 hours
Quick guide
- Choose one museum
- Choose one of the five museums before entering.
- Compare
- Set Buffalo Bill mythology beside material evidence.
Quick guide
- Begin
- Choose the museum you care about most before entering; the campus is too large for an undirected sweep.
- Compare
- Set Buffalo Bill’s carefully built public persona beside letters, objects, photographs, and the lives around him.
- Do not miss
- Look for the Plains Indian Museum’s cultural context and the Whitney’s changing ideas of western art.
- Allow
- Choose five to seven hours; the same admission is valid for two consecutive days for Buffalo Bill Center of the West May 1–September 15.
Good to know
Treat the Center as five museums rather than one gallery. Admission is valid for two days; large backpacks, coolers, bear spray, pepper spray, firearms, and long knives are prohibited.
Notice these
- Five museums under one roof
- Art, cultures, history, wildlife, firearms
- Set Buffalo Bill mythology beside material evidence.