Buffalo Bill State Park
A 1910 engineering landmark, broad reservoir recreation, and exposed chapters of Wyoming geology meet along the Shoshone River west of Cody.
Artwork inspired by Conrad Schwiering
Buffalo Bill is a dispersed reservoir park rather than one continuous waterfront. North Fork and Lake Shore campgrounds, Stagecoach and Sheep Mountain day-use areas, three boat ramps, and nine developed day-use sites serve different parts of its roughly 100-site recreation system. Choose the shore first; a map pin at park headquarters does not tell you where to launch, picnic, camp, or reach the water.
The landscape is inseparable from the Buffalo Bill Dam. Completed in 1910 at 325 feet, the concrete arch dam was then the world’s highest and helped turn Shoshone River water into a dependable irrigation supply for the Bighorn Basin. Raising its crest 25 feet in the early 1990s expanded storage and submerged older park facilities, so today’s shoreline is both a mountain panorama and a deliberately engineered landscape.
The exposed rock adds a much longer story. Near Hayden Bridge, Precambrian basement and Cambrian sandstone meet across a gap exceeding two billion years; the Rattlesnake Mountain anticline folds younger layers nearby, while the Heart Mountain detachment records one of Earth’s largest known ancient landslides. Wind, cold water, reservoir level, fire restrictions, and harmful-cyanobacterial-bloom notices can all change the practical visit, so consult the live park status page after choosing a zone.
- Dam
- 325 feet; world’s highest when completed in 1910
- Park access
- 3 ramps, 9 day-use areas, about 100 campsites
- Geology
- A 2-billion-year gap and a colossal ancient slide
Quick guide
- Begin
- Use the visitor center overlook to understand the 1910 arch dam before reading the reservoir as scenery.
- Do not miss
- Use the WSGS guide at Hayden Bridge to find the Great Unconformity and more than two billion missing years.
Quick guide
- Choose one district or route
- Look closely at the first stop inside Buffalo Bill State Park.
- Read the landscape process
- Compare that first impression with a second source of evidence.
- Make one grounded comparison
- Notice what changes when the route reaches the next evidence.
- Check conditions before committing
- Check the practical constraint before completing the Buffalo Bill State Park route.
Good to know
Harmful-algal-bloom monitoring and fire restrictions can change quickly. Avoid green water, surface scum, or dead fish; keep pets out, check the live advisory, and remember that strong west winds can turn calm shore water hazardous.
Notice these
- Pink and dark Precambrian rock beneath tan Cambrian sandstone near Hayden Bridge
- The tilted strata of the Rattlesnake Mountain anticline above the engineered shoreline
- How the raised reservoir, dam, ramps, and irrigation system reshape an apparently wild panorama