Wyoming inn honours the Wild West

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This article was published 21/07/2018 (2865 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Call me crazy, but I’m easily spooked, especially after learning I am spending the night next door to the ghost who haunts the historic Sheridan Inn in northern Wyoming.

Surprisingly, it’s not the spirit of the inn’s most famous former occupant — world renowned showman Col. William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody, who lived here between 1894 and 1902 — who is doing the haunting. It’s his seamstress, Miss Kate Arnold.

Cody partly owned the now 125-year-old inn and designed it to resemble a Scottish hunting lodge, where stuffed animal heads abound above large, stone fireplaces. Cody’s face, with his distinguished, handlebar moustache, is also prominently displayed above a full-sized stuffed grizzly bear “prowling” the hotel lobby — a lobby that hasn’t changed much since it was first built in 1893.

The high ceiling room, with its dark, wood beams and creaky staircase, still has its original hotel mailboxes and lobby desk. Here, front-desk clerks have served thousands of travellers passing through these parts since its Wild West heyday.

Visitors today will feel as if they have stepped back in time as soon as they walk into this grand three-storey inn, notable for its 69 window gables and sweeping veranda. Another highlight of the inn is the gleaming “Buffalo Bill” bar in the saloon, given to Cody as a gift from Queen Victoria for bringing his Wild West show to England for her jubilee. (He was also given a second bar from the queen located in the Irma Hotel in the town of Cody.)

Despite brimming with history, the Sheridan inn sat empty for 50 years, but after a major, multimillion-dollar renovation by its current owners, was reopened in 2015.

Keeping with the frontier spirit, the owners opted not to put televisions in the individual rooms and ensure all the updates honour the past. My room’s bathroom, for instance, features a clawfoot tub and black and white penny round tiles on the floor, that were popular at the turn of the century.

The inn’s porch overlooking a large front lawn is where Cody is said to have auditioned many of his more than 200 performers for his show that featured Native American culture and famous western re-enactments.

My imagination is running as wild as the horses in the wide-open landscapes of Wyoming as I take a seat on one of the many rocking chairs and picture Cody sizing up possible acts from the inn’s front veranda.

It’s that same imagination that later causes me a sleepless night at the inn. Despite my room’s extremely comfortable bed with its lovely Pendleton wool blanket and plush pillows, I toss and turn. What I would give now to be sleeping soundly on the second floor, in room 201 — the Buffalo Bill Cody room.

But instead, I am not only on the haunted third floor, but right next door to the ghost — Miss Kate, who lived in room 306. My room is 305 — the Grand Duke Alexis room — and since the inn is full this evening, there’s no way to request a room switch.

All of the inn’s 22 rooms are named after characters Cody knew during his lifetime. For instance, the Grand Duke Alexis, of Russia, had paid a goodwill visit to the United States in 1872 and had Buffalo Bill as a guide and chief hunter when his Royal Highness was able to kill a buffalo using one of Cody’s horses and rifle.

While I’m not bothered by his highness, I can’t stop thinking about Miss Kate next door.

She first came to the inn at the age of 22 and continued to work there for the next 64 years. Besides her seamstress duties, she also worked as a desk clerk, hostess and sitter for the children who visited the inn. Miss Kate was also the self-appointed night watchman, and made sure all the lights were turned off before retiring to her room. (The inn was the first building in Sheridan to get electric lights in 1893).

After Miss Kate died in 1968, a private service for her was held in her room and her ashes were placed in a wall of the inn. But no one is saying exactly where her final resting place is located.

That little fact kept me wondering all night if she was in the shared wall between room 305 and 306 — and was why I kept hearing strange sounds between the rooms.

Heading out the next morning, I met the occupant of room 306 — not Miss Kate, but fellow traveller Tom Bookwalter of Dayton, Ohio.

He and his wife, Melodie, having been visiting Sheridan for 42 years and they’ve purposely asked to stay in room 306 ever since the inn was reopened.

“We always bring Miss Kate red roses because she liked that flower,” he says, reminding me that Miss Kate in her lifetime tended a garden out back.

I ask whether the couple had any direct dealings with Miss Kate and Bookwalter says she once locked his wife out of their room. Unlike locks in modern hotel rooms, the doors of the Sheridan Inn require an old-fashioned skeleton key that you must turn to properly lock your door, so Bookwalter’s wife couldn’t have accidentally locked herself out.

Still, that encounter wasn’t enough for the Bookwalters to turn tail and run.

“I figured it was Miss Kate, but she didn’t do anyone any harm,” he says with a smile.

Getting a sense of the characters from the Wild West’s past was evident at nearly every stop I made on my tour through northern Wyoming. From seeing the courtroom setup in the Crook County Museum, where Harry A. Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid, was tried for horse theft and ultimately jailed in that little town of Sundance. Or hearing stories about fellow outlaw Butch Cassidy, who was able to hide out from the authorities with the help of family and friends in Bighorn Canyon. One of the best ways to see the canyon — the third-largest canyon in the United States — is taking the scenic boat tour with Hidden Treasure Charters (hiddentreasurecharters.com).

There are many western stories and characters from the past to learn about in Wyoming, but the one name that comes up time and time again is Buffalo Bill. I would recommend anyone who visits northern Wyoming include a visit to Cody — the western town he founded and is named in his honour.

At Cody’s Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2017, a hologram of the showman greets you at an exhibit showcasing his life. A personal highlight for me was watching old newsreel footage of the Wild West performances taken in 1910 in New York.

Besides the Buffalo Bill Museum, the centre contains four others museums — the Whitney Western Art Museum, the Plains Indian Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum and the Draper Natural History Museum. Cody is also the home of the Cody Nite Rodeo — the longest-running (it started in 1938) and only nightly summer rodeo in the world.

kpemberton@shaw.ca