- CountryUS
- Town:WY Cody
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Year of creation:1924
- Rider(s):Buffalo Bill Cody
(1846 –1917) was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in Iowa Territory and lived for several years in his father’s hometown Toronto in Canada, before the family returned to the Midwest and settled in the Kansas Territory.
Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven, after his father’s death, and became a rider for the Pony Express at age 15. During the American Civil War, he served the Union from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout for the US Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872.
One of the most famous and well-known figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill’s legend began to spread when he was only 23. Shortly thereafter he started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1883, taking his large company on tours in the United States and, from 1887 on, in Great Britain and continental Europe.
- Sculptor(s):Whitney, Gertrude Vanderbilt
(1875 –1942) was an American sculptor, art patron and collector. She was also the founder in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and a prominent social figure and hostess, who was born into the United States Vanderbilt family and married into the Whitney family.
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The statue Buffalo Bill – The Scout was placed in 1924 to commemorate the town’s most famous resident and de facto founder, Buffalo Bill Cody. The project was initiated by Buffalo Bill Cody’s niece, Mary Jester Allen. A New Yorker, she persuaded heiress and artist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to sculpt the piece.
Despite the offer of two existing sites in Cody, Vanderbilt selected and bought the final Cody site. Her first efforts attracted criticism for the type of horse, its pose, and its tack, all of which were regarded as too “eastern.” She then arranged for a horse named “Smokey” from Cody’s TE Ranch to be shipped to New York, along with a cowboy from Cody to pose in the saddle. The statue was dedicated in the presence of an unusual number of dignitaries for such a remote location. It stands on a large stone base, meant to represent nearby Cedar Mountain, which Cody chose as his gravesite. The base is a consciously ironic statement, since Cody was buried, against his wishes, at Lookout Mountain in Colorado.
Photo by Carol Highsmith
