Cody, Wyoming Attractions: What to Actually Do, With Current Prices
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the nightly rodeo, Old Trail Town, the dam in Shoshone Canyon, and the road to Yellowstone's East Gate. Hours, admission, and how many days each one really takes.
Cody has five attractions worth the drive and one of them takes two days on its own. The Buffalo Bill Center of the West is $23 for adults and the ticket is good for two consecutive days across all five museums, which is not generosity so much as an accurate estimate of how long it takes. The Cody Nite Rodeo runs every night from June through August at 8 p.m. for $30 adult and $20 for children 7 to 12. Old Trail Town is $15 and open May 15 to September 30. The Buffalo Bill Dam Visitor Center is free. And the East Entrance of Yellowstone, fifty miles west, is open May 1 through October 31.
Budget two full days for the town and a third if Yellowstone is part of the trip. Below is what each one costs, what hours it keeps, and how long it actually takes.
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West
720 Sheridan Ave, Cody, WY 82414. Five museums under one roof, and the Center’s own site says plainly: “Your ticket is good for two days of exploring all five museums.”
Admission, as posted:
| Category | Price |
|---|---|
| Adults | $23 |
| Seniors | $22 |
| Students with valid ID | $21 |
| Children 6 to 17 | $16 |
| Children under 5 | Free |
| Active US military | Free |
| Park County youth 17 and under, with one accompanying adult | Free |
Hours run by season:
- May 1 to September 15: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily
- September 16 to October 31: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily
- November 1 to 30: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily
- December 1 to February 28: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday through Sunday
- March 1 to April 30: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily
Closed New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
The five collections cover the Buffalo Bill story, Western art including Remington and Russell, Plains Indian material culture, the natural history of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem in the Draper, and firearms in a collection that runs to thousands of pieces. It is a serious museum that happens to sit in a town of 10,000 people, and the two-day ticket is the single best value in Park County.
Practical advice: go at 8 a.m. The summer hours open early specifically because everyone else arrives at eleven on their way out of Yellowstone. If you have any interest at all in the man himself, our biography of Buffalo Bill Cody is worth reading before you walk in rather than after.
The Cody Nite Rodeo
Stampede Park, 519 West Yellowstone Ave. Nightly through June, July and August, rodeo begins at 8:00 p.m.
2026 pricing:
- Adult: $30.00
- Child, ages 7 to 12: $20.00
- Children 6 and under: free
- Party Deck: $40.00, available June 1 to August 31, 2026
Worth knowing: the rodeo runs special-event nights at cut prices. Park County Nite on August 8, 2026 at 8:00 p.m. is priced at $5 for all tickets. If your dates are flexible and you are anywhere near Cody that week, that is the cheapest professional rodeo you will find in Wyoming.
The Cody Stampede is the separate, larger event, running June 30 to July 4 in 2026, and the Nite Rodeo pauses for it. Buzzard Roost seating is not sold during the Stampede.
An 8 p.m. start in a mountain valley at 5,000 feet means the second half of the show happens after the temperature drops. A Pendleton wool blanket across your lap in the stands is standard equipment here, not a flourish, and a wool overshirt covers the same ground if you would rather not carry a blanket. The dress register at a small-town nightly rodeo is looser than at Cheyenne Frontier Days, and our Western dress code guide sorts out which is which.
Old Trail Town
1831 Demaris Drive, on the west edge of town. Open May 15 to September 30. Gates open at 8:00 a.m. daily with last entrance at 5:15 p.m. Phone (307) 587-5302.
Admission:
- Adults: $15.00
- Seniors 65 and over: $14.00
- Youth 6 to 12: $8.00
- Children under 6: free
- Active military: free
This is a collection of real frontier buildings moved to one site rather than a reconstruction. The roster includes the Hole In The Wall Cabin associated with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Mud Spring Cabin used by Kid Curry and the Sundance Kid, Curley’s Cabin (Curley was the Crow scout with the Custer expedition), the Bonanza Post Office from 1885, a buffalo hunter’s cabin from 1880, the Coffin School from 1884, the Meeteetse blacksmith shop, a livery barn, a wagon barn, and the Museum of the Old West.
Two hours covers it. It is the counterweight to the polished version of the West you get everywhere else in town, and the buildings are the actual buildings.
Buffalo Bill Dam and Shoshone Canyon
Six miles west of town on the road to Yellowstone, US 14/16/20 runs through three tunnels and comes out at the Buffalo Bill Dam, wedged into a granite slot in Shoshone Canyon.
The visitor center is free and open May 1 to September 30, weekdays 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and weekends 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. You can walk the full width of the dam crest, which puts you 280 feet above the river.
It costs nothing, takes forty minutes, and it is on the way to everything west of town. There is no reason to skip it.
Heart Mountain
1539 Road 19, between Cody and Powell. The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center sits on the site of one of the ten camps where Japanese American citizens were incarcerated during the Second World War.
Hours run mid-May to early October, daily 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and early October to mid-May, Wednesday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with other visits by appointment. Admission is $14 for adults, $12 for seniors and students, $10 for children 10 to 17, free under 10, and $11 per person for commercial groups.
It is a small, serious museum and it sits in deliberate tension with everything else on this list. We wrote about what happened at Heart Mountain at length. Allow ninety minutes and do not schedule anything cheerful immediately after.
The road to Yellowstone
The East Entrance is open May 1 through October 31, per the National Park Service, covering the run from the gate over Sylvan Pass to Fishing Bridge. Cody sits about fifty miles east of the entrance on US 14/16/20, and the drive from town to the gate takes roughly an hour, with another hour from the gate to Lake Village.
That is a two-hour approach each way before you have looked at anything, which is the single most useful fact for anyone planning a Cody-based Yellowstone day. It works, but it is a long day and the return happens at dusk when the elk are on the road.
The other great drive out of Cody is the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway, Wyoming 296, running northwest over the Absaroka front toward Cooke City and connecting to the Beartooth Highway. Allow half a day and see our roundup of Wyoming scenic byways for how it compares to the rest.
Two things belong in the vehicle for either drive. A pair of compact binoculars in the 8x32 to 10x42 range turns a distant brown smudge on a hillside into a grizzly or a bull elk, and it is the difference between saying you saw wildlife and actually seeing it. And if you are getting out of the car anywhere in the Absaroka country, bear spray carried on your belt rather than in a pack is the standard local practice; this is occupied grizzly habitat from the edge of town westward.
An insulated bottle is the other thing. Services between the East Entrance and Fishing Bridge are limited and seasonal.
How to sequence two days
Day one. Buffalo Bill Center of the West from 8 a.m. Break for lunch downtown on Sheridan Avenue. Back into the Center for the afternoon on the strength of the two-day ticket. Cody Nite Rodeo at 8 p.m.
Day two. Old Trail Town when the gates open at 8 a.m., then the Buffalo Bill Dam visitor center on the way west, then either the Chief Joseph Byway for the afternoon or the second half of the Center’s collections if the first day did not finish them. Heart Mountain instead, if the drive appeals less than the history.
A third day buys you Yellowstone, but plan it as a full day rather than an afternoon.
For the rest of the town, including where to eat and where to stay, see our local’s guide to Cody.
What to skip
The gunfight reenactment outside the Irma is free, brief, and fine. It is not a reason to arrange your evening. The souvenir shops on Sheridan Avenue sell the same mass-produced goods as every other Western tourist town. And a two-hour visit to the Buffalo Bill Center is a worse use of $23 than not going at all; if you cannot give it half a day, spend the money on the rodeo.
Related reading on this site
- Cody, Wyoming: a local’s guide to the East Gate of Yellowstone
- Buffalo Bill Cody: the man who sold the West to the world
- Heart Mountain: the internment camp between Cody and Powell
- Wyoming scenic byways, including the Chief Joseph and the Beartooth
- Cheyenne Frontier Days: the complete guide to the Daddy of ‘Em All
- 9 Wyoming hot springs you can actually soak in
- The Western dress code, decoded by setting
Further reading
- Buffalo Bill Center of the West, for current exhibitions and the seasonal hours in the month you travel.
- Cody Stampede Rodeo, for the Nite Rodeo calendar and the special-event nights that price below $30.
- National Park Service Yellowstone road status, for East Entrance and Sylvan Pass conditions, which move with the weather at either end of the season.
Sources
- Buffalo Bill Center of the West, visitor information (admission and hours)
- Cody Stampede Rodeo, tickets (Cody Nite Rodeo pricing)
- Cody Stampede Rodeo, Cody Nite Rodeo
- Old Trail Town, official site (season, hours, admission)
- Buffalo Bill Dam Visitor Center
- Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, visit information
- National Park Service, Yellowstone park roads (East Entrance season)