The Buffalo Bill Boyhood Home is a two story frame house containing two rooms downstairs and two room upstairs. The house was built by Issac Cody, father of William Frederick Cody (Buffalo Bill) at LeClere, Iowa in 1841. This boyhood home of Buffalo Bill was brought to Cody in 1933 through the efforts of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. It was placed adjacent to the Railroad's Burlington Inn as a point of interest to the Inn's guests. In 1947 the Railroad gave the home to the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association. It was again moved to a new location near the Buffalo Bill Museum. Then in 1968 the Memorial Association sold its museum building and moved into its new Buffalo Bill Historical Center. In 1970 Buffalo Bill's Boyhood Home was moved again adjacent to the Historical Center.

The history of the creation of this statue-memorial commenced one day during the early 1920s when Mrs. Mary Jester Allen, a niece of Buffalo Bill Cody then living in New York City, called at the town house of Mrs. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Mrs. Allen had recently helped other interested relations organize the Cody Family, Incorporated, and she had been selected chairman of that corporation's National Museum Committee. She called on Mrs. Whitney to ask that she sculpt a statue of Buffalo Bill. Mrs. Whitney became enthused with the idea of a Buffalo Bill Statue and she adopted and took over management of the entire project. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was the daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the granddaughter of another Cornelius (the Commodore) Vanderbilt. She married into another prominent New York family when she became the bride of Harry Payne Whitney. She studied under Hendrick C. Anderson and James Earle Fraser in New York and, later, under Andrew O'Connor and Rodin in Paris. By 1920 she had fully developed her style, and completed works including the Titanic Memorial in Washington, D.C., the El Dorado Fountain in San Francisco, the Aztec Fountain in Washington, D.C., and the heroic statue of Columbus at Palos in Spain.

There were four possible choices of sites for the location of the proposed memorial: in Iowa, where Cody had been born; in Kansas, where he had won the sobriquet Buffalo Bill; in Nebraska where he had established his ''Scout's Rest'' Ranch; and in Wyoming where he had finally chosen to make his home. Mrs. Whitney chose the location in Wyoming. She had also decided that the statue would be an equestrian one depicting the frontier army scout in mounted action. To that end she decided that only models of genuine western origin could validly pose for this work. She arranged to have the horse ''Smokey'' shipped via railway express to New York from Buffalo Bill's T E Ranch; found a local citizen, a tall and lithe cowboy, to pose in the saddle; arranged for him to go to New York also; and then she returned to her studio to sculpt. The statue was finished in early 1924. It was shipped on a railroad flatcar to Cody, where an unveiling ceremony was scheduled for July 4th. Miss Jane Cody Garlow, granddaughter of Buffalo Bill, unveiled the bronze statue which was placed on open prairie on the western fringe of the small town.

Downtown Cody Historic District contains historically significant buildings primarily dating from 1900 to the 1930s. Basically a rather small district encompassing only a few blocks along Sheridan Avenue, the Cody buildings are typical of other commercial structures built in Wyoming during the same period. Yet the sandstone buildings constructed of locally quarried materials lend the district a distinctive western character. The sandstone and brick detailing of the facades represent a simple stylistic approach to commercial design. Today, the buildings in the Downtown Cody Historic District represent a prosperous commercial area that grew in northern Wyoming at the turn of the century.

Diverse governmental and economic factors helped to assure the town of continued growth and success. William F. ''Buffalo Bill'' Cody used his money and influence to encourage agricultural and commercial development in the Big Horn Basin starting in the 1890s. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Federal reclamation projects provided thousands of acres of farmland in the region surrounding Cody. As ranchers prospered, the town incorporated in 1901 and became the heart of commercial activity for the area. The success of local merchants helped to bring the railroad and municipal improvements to the town early in its development. Cody became the center for local governmental facilities in 1910 when it was established as the Park County seat. The discovery of oil in Elk Basin north of Cody in 1915 gave the town a new industry. During the teens and twenties, agriculture continued to play a dominant role in Cody's growth but the influence of tourist dollars diversified and strengthened Cody's economic base. In 1915 a road constructed between the town and Yellowstone National Park's east entrance permanently affected Cody's development. The popularity of dude ranches and automobile travel beginning in the twenties helped to assure Cody's continued stability. Today, the buildings in Cody's historic district are still the heart of the commercial area and the solid brick and stone buildings physically illustrate the economic successes of Cody's early years.

William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody was instrumental in the founding and development of the town of Cody, Wyoming in the late 1890s. He believed the town would become a staging point and outfitting headquarters for sightseers touring Yellowstone Park, for big game hunting sportsmen, for vacationers making summertime pack-horse trips into the mountains, for clients patronizing the newly developed dude ranches in the vicinity, and for businessmen investigating and developing ranching, mining and other industrial potentials. He foresaw the need for a hotel and envisioned an outstanding facility. The Irma Hotel, named after one of his daughters, opened for business in 1902. At the opening of the hotel one of the most talked about features was the cherrywood bar and back-bar installed in the saloon. It had been made in France and came to Colonel Cody as a gift from Queen Victoria of England in appreciation of a command performance, staged for her court, by the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. The Irma Hotel established a reputation as a center of social activity which it has maintained through the years.

Built in 1945-46, the Paul Stock House is a 6700 square foot, twelve-room Spanish Colonial Revival, or Spanish Eclectic, style ranch house located in a secluded cul de sac overlooking the Shoshone River. The property includes two identical guest houses and a separate, two-car garage/living quarters. The house was originally designed by noted Wyoming architect Leon Goodrich of Casper, who designed many buildings throughout the state beginning in the 1920s and continuing until his death in 1969. Although Paul Stock fired Goodrich from the job, Stock followed the original plans with some minor modifications. The house is constructed of hollow clay tiles, sided with swirl-patterned stucco, and topped with a flat, regularly laid mission tile roof. The two identical guest houses on the property were built at the same time as the house and mimic the Spanish Eclectic style of the main house. The two-car garage/servants' quarters is also in the same style. Paul Stock was a pioneer oil man, philanthropist, and three time Cody mayor who died in 1972. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center received Paul Stock's house after the death of his third wife, Eloise, in 1985, and uses it today for cultural and educational purposes.

The Quintin Blair House was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and constructed in 1952-53. The stone and wood house is the only work of Frank Lloyd Wright in Wyoming. It is an excellent example of Wright's ''natural house'', a residential style that became important in the development of Post World War II suburbia. Mr. and Mrs. Quintin Blair has the pleasure of being a part of the last decade of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture and life. In 1951, Wright told the Blairs that he wanted to build a house for them because he did not have one of his houses in Wyoming. Wright directed the building of the house over the telephone to Mr. Blair, who then directed the contractors. Wright never visited the site but he did send apprentices. The design of the Quintin Blair House represents the major focus of Wright's architecture after World War II--the design of private homes that integrate with and reflect their natural setting and is significant as the work of a master architect.

The building named Stock Center was completed and dedicated as the Buffalo Bill Museum in 1927. Until it ceased to serve that purpose in 1969 it was a part of a growing historical-cultural complex which eventually came to be known as the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. The old museum building was constructed of carefully chosen lodgepole pine logs fitted together by carftsmen under direction of the area's acknowledged master-builder of log structures. The conception was to represent, though on a vaster than average scale, a typical cattleman's frontier ranch house. The City of Cody came into possession of the property in 1969 and named it Stock Center.