Buffalo Bill's Wild West Headquarters Hotel
856 Broadway St, Sheridan, WY 82801
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Overnight rates vary by season; on-site dining at Open Range restaurant is moderately priced.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved sidewalks; historic building with elevator access to most floors
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1893 · National Register of Historic Places · Buffalo Bill Cody Connection · Wild West Show Headquarters · National Historic Landmark · Railroad Era Architecture · Wyoming Statehood Era
Modeled on a Scottish hunting lodge by architect Thomas Kimball, the Sheridan Inn opened on May 27, 1893, just one year before Wyoming's railroad branch reached the town. The three-story frame structure with its sweeping front porch and 69 dormer windows was built by the Sheridan Land Company to anchor a young cow town aspiring to permanence. When Buffalo Bill Cody first arrived, he became a part owner and made the Inn his Northern Plains base of operations.
From that long porch, Cody auditioned new performers for his Wild West Show, evaluating ropers, sharpshooters, and bronc riders against the silhouette of the Bighorn Mountains. The Inn served as a stop for cattle barons, mining magnates, and traveling dignitaries through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Calamity Jane is recorded as a frequent visitor, as were Ernest Hemingway, Will Rogers, and various American presidents.
In 1901, a 22-year-old Virginian named Catherine B. Arnold arrived to work at the Inn. Known to all as Miss Kate, she remained on staff for 64 years, serving in turn as seamstress, desk clerk, hostess, housekeeper, and de facto babysitter for traveling families. Flowers cut from her garden behind the building decorated the dining room tables every day she worked. When she died in 1968, her stated final wish was to be interred within the building she had called home for over six decades. Her ashes were placed inside the wall of her third-floor room.
The Inn faced demolition in the 1960s but was rescued through a community preservation effort and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After a major restoration, it reopened as a 22-room boutique hotel with rooms themed around Buffalo Bill and figures from his life. The Inn is owned and operated as the Sheridan Inn, BW Signature Collection, and continues to host overnight guests, weddings, and dinners at its on-site Open Range restaurant.
Sources
Miss Kate Arnold's continued presence at the Sheridan Inn is reported with a casualness that suggests long acquaintance. Staff describe her behavior as proprietary rather than alarming. Doors close behind guests in empty hallways. Lamps switch on without prompting. The temperature in her third-floor room drops noticeably even on warm summer evenings, a phenomenon documented by multiple visiting investigators.
Miss Kate's room is the only quarters in the Inn whose interior wall contains a person. Her cremated remains were placed there at her request when she died in 1968, after 64 years of continuous service. The room is bookable. Guests who request it report variations on the same experiences: footsteps in an empty hallway, the quiet click of a doorknob turning, a soft sense of being chaperoned.
The Wyoming Historical Society has documented several first-hand accounts from staff. One former employee described arriving for an early morning shift to find a third-floor lamp burning in a room that had not been rented the night before. Another reported the smell of cut flowers in the dining room hours before the kitchen opened. Miss Kate was known in life for the bouquets she cut from her own garden each morning.
While the Sheridan Inn does not market itself as a haunted attraction, the legend of Miss Kate is an open secret among staff and longtime guests. Investigators have visited and recorded their findings; the management neither encourages nor denies the activity. The Inn presents Miss Kate the way she presented herself in life: quietly competent, attentive to the building's needs, present without being obtrusive.
Notable Entities
Book one of 22 guest rooms, each themed around Buffalo Bill Cody and figures from his Wild West Show. Miss Kate's third-floor room, where her ashes are interred in the wall, is the most-requested for guests hoping to encounter the Inn's resident steward.
Fine dining in the Inn's restaurant, where staff and diners have reported the resident presence of Miss Kate Arnold opening doors and turning lights on and off near the dining room she once decorated with garden flowers.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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