Riddled with holes and its ears, horns, tail and an eye missing, the fiberglass white buffalo statue honoring the famed Wild West showman William F. “Buffalo” Bill Cody on Cedar Mountain just outside his namesake town has seen better days.
That’s why a small group of Cody residents, including Park County Archivist Brian Beauvais, are organizing an effort to repair and restore the white buffalo.
It stands about 5 feet tall and with its pedestal is 8-10 feet wide, standing guard on a native stone and concrete platform on the precipice of Cedar Mountain, overlooking a massive canyon and the Buffalo Bill Reservoir behind it.
A reminder of the community’s storied beginnings and its larger-than-life founder, it's also been a target of vandals.
“As a community service project, I want to go up and make it like something that we want to have around Cody,” Beauvais said.
Buffalo Bill Cody founded the town and is memorialized in a number of locations throughout the city. The white buffalo is one of the least known, located at a somewhat remote site at 7,560 feet near the top of Cedar Mountain. There’s no longer any marker or signage telling visitors what it is and why it’s there, and has been repainted white from its original brown coat.
Over the years, the buffalo has been abused by society, suffering vandalism at the hands of many people who likely didn’t know — or didn’t care — what the bison represents.
History Of The Bison
The buffalo has an interesting connection to the saga of Buffalo Bill’s gravesite.
Buffalo Bill Cody stated in his will that he wanted to be buried on Cedar Mountain to “lie in close proximity to that fair section of my native country which bears my name and in the growth and development of which I have taken so deep and loving an interest.”
But when he died while on a trip to Colorado in 1917, his wife had him buried on Lookout Mountain outside Golden instead.
Some conspiracy theorists have claimed that Buffalo Bill’s remains were successfully transported to Cody, but these stories have been long disproven.
As a way of making amends to Cody, the city of Golden donated the buffalo to the city in 1968, dropping the bison to its final resting place with a Husky Oil helicopter during an elaborate ceremony held in both towns.
Since that time, the buffalo has served as a marker for one of the legendary faces of the Old West and one of Wyoming’s most historic towns.
“I hope people take pride in this statue as a piece of community art and just as a historical reminder of Buffalo Bill and his place in Cody,” Beauvais said.
The Buffalo on Cedar Mountain overlooking Cody in honor of Buffalo Bill Cody has been shot up and vandalized over the years. Before it was put there in 1968, another marker stood showing the spot Buffalo Bill wanted to be buried. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
A memorial marking where Buffalo Bill wanted to be buried on the top of Cedar Mountain before the installation of the statue. Renown Cody hunter Ned Frost stands at the memorial for his friend Buffalo Bill Cody, before the installation of the buffalo statue. (Courtesy Photo) 
The original buffalo statue shortly after it was installed in 1968. (Courtesy Photo)
Renewal
The buffalo is located on BLM land, but can only be accessed by crossing through private property.
When neither the BLM or any other entity claimed responsibility for the buffalo and seeing the state of disrepair it had fallen into, Beauvais and friends Corey Anco and Amy Phillips of the Draper Natural History Museum decided something needed to be done to restore its legacy.
“We just want to clean it up and make it look good as a community service project,” Beauvais said. “We don’t want to do anything substantial to change it, I just want to reattach the broken-off appendages … just make it look like something we can be proud of.”
They’re also doing it in honor of their friend Jeremy Johnston, who was originally supposed to be part of the project but died in June from cancer. Johnston worked at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, first as the managing editor of The Papers of William F. Cody, and then as curator of the Buffalo Bill Museum.
“With him passing away, that added another layer of meaning with this project,” Beauvais said. “He was so important in preserving the history of Buffalo Bill.”
After taking measurements of the buffalo, the trio coordinated with Ray Hatfield at Nature’s Design Taxidermy in Cody to replace the buffalo’s body parts that had been lopped off. They’ll also give it a fresh coat of white paint.
In October, they plan to refurbish the buffalo to bring it to a much more dignified state. The group plans to replace the appendages with fiberglass mesh sheets, fiberglass resin and epoxy to cover up the holes in its body with fiberglass. Beauvais and the group aren't seeking money for the project and are doing it as a strictly charitable gesture.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
