Scouts' Rest Ranch - North Platte, Nebraska
Posted by: 
Hikenutty
N 41° 09.801 W 100° 47.765
14T E 349316 N 4558445
Scouts' Rest Ranch was owned by Buffalo Bill Cody. It is now a State Historic Site and both Cody's home and the coral can be visited.
Waymark Code: WM1ZDJ
Location: Nebraska, United States
Date Posted: 08/08/2007
Views: 21
The following excerpt is from
Nebraska: A Guide to the Cornhusker State and can be found in the driving tour 8 section.
Right on this road to SCOUTS' REST RANCH, .5 m. (adm. Free), former home of "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who entertained here the North brothers, Kit Carson, General Sheridan, Pawnee Bill, Death Valley Scottie, Buck Taylor, and Bishop Beecher.
William Frederick Cody spent part of his boyhood in Leavonworth, Kans., where were the headquarters of the freighting line of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, supply-carriers for the Government. Young Cody first appeared in the Platte country as an outrider for his company – a sort of office boy on horseback. He often traveled the section of the Oregon Trail that went past his future home. Later, when the tracks of the Kansas Pacific (now part of the Union Pacific) were moving westward from Kansas City, he contracted to furnish buffalo meat for the construction workers. It is said that within 17 months he delivered 4, 280 buffaloes that he had shot.
When the construction days were over he turned to the stage and for four years toured the United States in a production called the 'Prairie Waif'. He then conceived the idea of the Wild West Show that made him famous and created many romantic notions about the West.
Shaded by cottonwoods and facing the grounds where the Wild West Show was rehearsed is a solid ranch house, rebuilt since Cody's day, and an immense barn. Everything at the ranch was reminiscent of Cody's shows; the eaves of the main corral, built in 1887, look like gunstocks, and the cattle stall partitions have the outlines of horses.
The plat of the ranch resembles the map of Nebraska.
This place is well worth the $3 fee to visit the site and walk around. In the barn you'll find all types of memorabilia from Cody's days there. Playbills from his shows still hang where he pasted them above the horse stalls, and photographs of him and his players hang on the wall. The Victorian house he had built is open to tour and has been furnished as it would have been while Cody and his family lived there.
There is also a small sod roofed cabin on the property where ranch hands lived that has been furnished also. The property is beautiful and very peaceful spot.