The Irma Hotel Cody Wyoming: its History, its Rooms and Buffalo Bill's Hotel
Published
Buffalo Bill Cody put his name on a town in 1896 and six years later he built it a hotel. The Irma Hotel Cody Wyoming opened on Sheridan Avenue in 1902, named for his youngest daughter, and it is still operating on the same street under the same name, whether that gets written out in full or shortened to the Irma Hotel Cody WY. The continuity is unusual enough to be the main reason the place is worth your attention.
The history: why the Irma Hotel Cody Wyoming exists
Cody was a promotion before it was a town. The founders were selling the idea of a settlement at the mouth of the Shoshone canyon, positioned to catch traffic heading for the new national park to the west. A settlement that intends to be taken seriously needs somewhere for visitors to sleep, and it needs that place to look permanent.
The Irma was that argument in stone. Frontier main streets of that period were mostly timber and false fronts, so a two-story sandstone hotel, quarried locally and deliberately heavier than the town actually needed, was a statement aimed at anyone passing through and wondering whether Cody would still be there in ten years. The party that opened the Buffalo Bill Irma Hotel on 18 November 1902 had press and dignitaries at it from as far away as Boston. Reading the place as a hotel first and a statement second gets the order wrong.
The Irma hotel history after that is written into the stonework. Additions over the following decades extended it along the block, and the joins are still visible if you look. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973, and it is not a preserved museum piece: it is a building that has been added to, altered and kept in use for well over a century.
The restaurant and the cherrywood bar
The single most photographed object in Cody sits in the hotel dining room. The elaborate cherrywood back bar was a gift from Queen Victoria, who was sufficiently taken with Buffalo Bill’s command performance of the Wild West show for the royal family that she sent him a bar. It arrived while the hotel was still going up and it has stood in the same room ever since. It is genuinely impressive: tall, dark, heavily carved, and completely at odds with the plain stone shell around it.
You do not need to be a guest to see it. The dining room and bar are open to the public, and a good proportion of the people looking at the bar on any given day have walked in off the street. As a restaurant the Buffalo Bill Irma Hotel does a straightforward job, and the reason to eat there is the room. Sitting under that bar for an hour is a different experience from photographing it in passing, and this is one of the few places in Cody where the building is the point of the evening.
The rooms, old wing and new
The Irma Hotel Cody WY has grown over its lifetime, and not all rooms are the same proposition. The original rooms sit in the historic building and later additions run alongside. The historic rooms are the reason most people book: period rooms in a period building, with the character and the quirks that implies. If the point of staying at the Irma is to stay in the Irma, confirm which wing at the time of booking.
Position is the other thing the Irma Hotel Cody Wyoming offers. Sheridan Avenue is the middle of Cody, which puts the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the shops and the restaurants within walking distance and leaves the car parked. In a town where most lodging sits out on the through-roads, that changes how an evening works.
The name, and the spelling
Irma Cody was Buffalo Bill’s youngest daughter. The hotel has carried her name since it opened, and locally the building is usually just “the Irma”, with the word hotel dropped entirely.
Anyone reading Irma hotel history will meet three forms of the name, all of them this building: the Irma, the Buffalo Bill Irma Hotel, and the Irma Hotel Cody WY. It also turns up as the Erma, which is a misreading of the same word. There is one hotel and all of it points there.
Where the Irma Hotel Cody Wyoming fits in a visit
The Irma works best for people who want the town and not the valley. It puts you in walking distance of the museum complex and dinner, and a short drive from the rodeo grounds. What it does not do is put you closer to Yellowstone. For that, the lodges and ranches up the North Fork are an hour nearer the gate, at the cost of being an hour further from everything else.
Common questions
Who built the Irma Hotel?
William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill himself, in 1902, six years after he co-founded the town. He named it for his youngest daughter Irma, and the Irma Hotel Cody Wyoming has traded under that name ever since.
Is the Irma Hotel haunted?
It has a long-standing local reputation for it, and staff and guest accounts circulate freely, several of them involving Buffalo Bill himself. Treat it as part of the building's folklore, which is how Cody treats it.
Is it the Irma or the Erma Hotel?
The Irma, named for Irma Cody. Erma is a common misreading of the same name, and the Irma Hotel Cody WY is the building both spellings mean.
Can you stay in the original 1902 part of the Irma Hotel?
Yes, but it has to be asked for. The historic rooms sit in the original building and the later additions run alongside it, so a booking does not land in the old wing by default. Anyone staying at the Irma for the building itself should confirm which wing at the time of booking.