Experience the best of Cody

William F. Cody, the scout and showman known as Buffalo Bill, helped found the town in 1896, and the Irma Hotel on the main street, named after his daughter, still stands. The Buffalo Bill Center of the West groups five museums under one roof, covering the showman's life, Plains Indian cultures, Western art, natural history and firearms.

The Shoshone River runs past the town through red canyon country, with the Buffalo Bill Dam holding back a reservoir upstream. The road west follows the river through the Wapiti Valley to the east entrance of Yellowstone, about eighty kilometres away, beneath the Absaroka Mountains. North-east of Cody, Heart Mountain overlooks the site of a camp where Japanese Americans were held in the Second World War.

Ranch cooking is the rule: beef steaks, bison burgers, hearty breakfasts and trout from the rivers. The high plains are dry and sunny, winters are cold with snow on the Absarokas, and the summer evenings are cool.