They Stole Buffalo Bill's House
Tracking the showman and his home from LeClaire, Iowa, to Golden, Colorado.
Categories: Renegade Roads
By: Scott M. Fisher 04/01/2008
While Cody visited his sister in Denver, the end came for him on January 10, 1917. The city had never seen the likes of the funeral ceremony that was put on for the old scout. His body, lying in state in the state capitol rotunda, was visited by a line of thousands, with bands playing.
Cody historians know well the controversy surrounding Cody’s funeral and ultimate burial on Lookout Mountain. On Memorial Day (then called “Decoration Day”) 1917, the funeral procession wound its way up the road of Lookout Mountain to the spot where Cody’s daughter, sister and Johnny Baker insisted that the old scout had indicated he wished to spend eternity.
Citizens of both North Platte, Nebraska, and Cody, Wyoming, each claimed that it was their site where Bill wanted to be buried, no doubt thinking of the revenue generated by the annual visitors to his grave. Citizens of Denver took the threats of “body stealing” so seriously that a tank and armed troops from the Colorado National Guard were dispatched to guard the mountaintop grave. After Cody’s wife passed away and was laid to rest next to him several years later, many tons of concrete were poured on top of the crypt, effectively ending any threat to stealing the body and establishing Lookout Mountain as the “Grave site of Buffalo Bill.”
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