Buffalo Bill's Favorite Inn

Buffalo Bill's Favorite Inn

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody would still feel at home looking out a window of the 1893 Sheridan Inn, where he once watched disembarking train passengers to spot anyone he might want to audition for his famed Wild West Show.

“Buffalo Bill used to stand right here and look over at the depot, so he could see whether anyone interesting was getting off the train,” says Della Herbst, pointing from a Sheridan Inn window.

Herbst, a former Wyoming state legislator and mayor of Sheridan (pop. 16,900), helped preserve the National Historic Landmark, once partly owned by Cody, after it was sold to developers and slated for demolition in 1965. Today, the inn’s exterior has been restored and a $2.5 million interior restoration is well under way.

“Too much American history has been lost,” Herbst says. “If we can keep this building a viable part of the community, it will help people remember their roots.”

Sheridan took root in the 1880s to serve the region’s sprawling cattle industry. The inn, with its 69 gables, hasn’t been open as a hotel since 1965, but many guest rooms remain in their original design. Third floor rooms are small, only 6-by-10 feet, and originally included a bed, wash stand, and clothes rack. Downstairs, the main floor rooms are refurbished and open again for dining, meetings, and receptions—including the main dining room, ladies parlor, the oak and mahogany bar (built in England), and the original lobby and registration desk.

The inn’s original registration book has Buffalo Bill’s signature. Others guests at the inn included Calamity Jane, Herbert Hoover, Will Rogers, Wendell Wilkie, and Ernest Hemingway, who wrote part of Farewell to Arms in an upstairs room.

High-stakes poker hands were played in the card room, ranch women checked in to give birth to their children in comfort, and the fabled Bozeman Trail ran just north of the inn.

History has been kept alive in other Sheridan structures as well.

Across the street, the original wooden railroad depot owes its survival to David Frank, a California native who lived in Britain before moving to Sheridan nine years ago.

“Being in a place where I could walk two blocks to a pub that had been there since the 1400s probably helped me develop an appreciation for antiquity,” says Frank, a bird expert who used to appear on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. He bought the two-story depot to restore it, finishing the job in 2001. Now he leases it to the Daniels Fund, a philanthropic organization headquartered there.

Shops selling Western wear, saddles, and ranch gear remain Main Street fixtures. So does the Mint Bar, where five generations of Stetson-wearing regulars have traded stories, and where ranchers have burned their brands into the wood walls.

“Sheridan feels like what I would imagine the West to be like,” says Julia Monczunski, a visitor from Indiana. “Beautiful surroundings and a definite cowboy attitude pervading.”

Many of Sheridan’s cultural events happen in yet another restored historic building, the WYO Theater on Main Street. The 483-seat auditorium opened for vaudeville in 1923, and now features national and international touring artists, including ballet companies, childrens’ theater troupes, South American musicians, Israeli pianist Rami Bar-Niv, and country singer Garth Brooks.

“To see someone like Garth Brooks in a theater of fewer than 500 seats is really incredible,” says Fabian Wyatt, WYO Theater executive director.

In this town no one would think it strange to pull on cowboy boots, sit in the Mint Bar discussing rodeo, and then walk across the street for ballet. As Della Herbst says, Sheridan may be civilized now, but it’s still the Old West.

Paul Higbee is a freelance writer in Spearfish, S.D.

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