Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Cody, Wyoming

The area that eventually became the town of Cody, Wyoming, sits on the west central border of the broad Bighorn Basin in present-day northwestern Wyoming. The basin is a 12,000-square-foot arid rolling plain with an annual precipitation of 8 inches (the overall average rainfall west of the Mississippi is 12 inches). It lies between a series of phenomenal mountain ranges with peaks rising more than 13,000 feet: the Big Horn Mountains to the east, the Absaroka and Beartooth Mountains to the west, and the Owl Creeks and Wind River to the south. The Yellowstone River and the Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone form the basin's northern boundary. Cody is situated just east of the confluence of the north and south fork's of the Shoshone River, which flow into the Bighorn and then the Yellowstone Rivers.

Early Habitation

A gap between mountain ranges at the basin's northern end provided trail and trade routes for the first inhabitants of the American West beginning at least 11,200 years ago. Three important archeological sites in the Bighorn Basin, each excavated in the late 20th century, indicate the presence of long-standing cultural networks in the Cody area before white settlement.

Intermittent occupation of Shoshone Canyon, 10 miles toward present-day Yellowstone National Park from Cody, began 10,000 years ago. The objects found there show that cultural interactions between Rocky Mountain highlands and plains cultures were common. By the early 1800s, the Bighorn Basin was the center of Crow territory. Many other Native Americans also migrated through the basin. Early travelers followed game trails, which later became major roads. The Bannock trail, one of the Yellowstone region's earliest Indian thoroughfares, had a connecting trail up the Shoshone Valley through what became Cody. Shoshone, Arapaho, and Bannock (often referred to as Sheepeater) Indians traveled the Bannock on seasonal migrations. Trade fairs at places such as the Mandan and Hidatsa villages along the Missouri river in present-day North Dakota and on the Green River in Wyoming brought the Shoshone, Blackfoot, Arapaho, and Crow into contact with each other and, later, with European fur trappers. After the introduction of the horse in the early 18th century (the Shoshone probably acquired the horse from the Comanche on the Green River), travel and migration became easier and encouraged the expansion of tribes who achieved great wealth in horses. As the Shoshone expanded, for instance, other groups such as the Blackfoot and Kiowa adjusted and moved north and east.

American Exploration

When President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark up the Missouri River in 1804, he hoped to create viable American trade networks with Indians of the area. Though the Americans did not visit the Bighorn Basin on that trip, one of their explorers, John Colter, later did. After leaving the Lewis and Clark expedition on their return, Colter explored and trapped in the Bighorn Basin, spending the winter of 1806–1807 in the vicinity of the Clark's Fork Canyon within about 60 miles of present-day Cody. In 1807, from Fort Raymond at the mouth of the Big Horn River, Colter traveled to what he named the Stinking Water (later known as the Shoshone), the river that flowed through the heart of Cody. From this exploration, Colter made a map of Shoshone Canyon that Captain Clark later published in the 1820s.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution