Where the Buffalo Roam and Buffalo Bill Rests An Afternoon Trip into the Wild, the Weird, and the West

 Wild Right Here: A Bison, Some Elk, and the Best Free Safari You’ve Never Heard Of

You wouldn’t believe what’s tucked right into the middle of Denver. I didn’t.

Just a few miles from my hotel—close enough to hit with a well-thrown coffee cup—is the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. I knew about it in a vague way, I drove past the sign a few times on my way to the hotel, but I wasn’t prepared for the scale. You pull in and suddenly it’s not a city anymore. It’s wide, it’s still, and it feels far. At points, you forget there are whole neighborhoods just outside the fence.

They’ve got 16,000 acres and an 11-mile wildlife drive that loops through the park like your own personal safari. You stay in your car and roll along, eyes wide, windows down, engine idling like a nervous heartbeat. It’s completely free to enter, and they’ve even got an audio guide you can download that tracks your progress and gives you facts mile-by-mile.

Though full disclosure—I kept driving too slow. The tape would start talking about mile four, and I’d still be poking around mile two like a lost tourist in Jurassic Park.

The first animals I really locked onto were the prairie dogs. Hundreds of them. They pop up like furry periscopes, skitter across the road, and stand on their hind legs to give you that judgmental stare only rodents can master. Think squirrels with a western flair and no trees. Adorable little sentinels.

Then came the bison. Or buffalo. I always forget the technical difference, but either way—big, iconic, heavy as legend. The first ones I saw were a ways off. Close enough for photos, far enough that I wasn’t tempted to roll down my window and say hi. I parked and watched them for a while. Something about seeing them out there grazing in open land just feels right, like flipping back a few pages in a much older book.

Just before the exit, I caught sight of some mule deer. Massive. Majestic. No other word fits. Other cars had stopped too, like we all knew we were interrupting something sacred. I just sat in the stillness, watching it breathe and blink and exist.

And then—I looped back around. Just like that. On a whim. No crowds. No pressure. The kind of spontaneous detour that always seems to lead somewhere good.

That second pass? Totally worth it.

A bison stepped into the road and stopped. He was a car length away. Then he turned—crossed slowly in front of me—and came so close to the driver’s side that I could see his breath hanging in the dust. His hair moved with the breeze. Mud clung to his flank like dried armor. You don’t forget a moment like that. You don’t even reach for your phone. You just watch.

Right before I left the park, another mule deer appeared—this one closer than the first. So close it felt like I could reach out and touch it.

And then, in less than five minutes, I was back in the city. Traffic. Traffic lights. People.

But the shift hit me hard. I started thinking about what this land must’ve been like before Denver was here. Before highways and hotels and rental cars. When this place belonged to the herds. When the dust came from hooves, not construction sites. When it was just millions of bison—or buffalo—take your pick—roaming a continent that still had room for wildness.

And for a little while, at least, it felt like I’d stepped back into it.

The Wild West Is Buried Here… Maybe

After the preserve, I met up with a teammate I've never met in person, on top of Lookout Mountain. Yeah, yeah—go ahead and make your “Makeout Point” jokes. I’ll wait.

The road up was a slow, winding climb. When I got to the top, we were about 7,300 feet above sea level. The views? Absolutely insane. Mountains in every direction, some still capped with snow. You could see ridgelines just fade into infinity. My cell service was terrible because the towers were beneath me. Not mad about it.

While my camera was capturing a time-lapse of the sunset—which, honestly, didn’t really deliver thanks to some heavy cloud cover—I wandered up the path and found myself at Buffalo Bill’s grave. Yep. That Buffalo Bill. Wild West legend, showman, scout, storyteller.

There’s a ton of signage around his gravesite—stories, photos, and notes about the 20,000 people who viewed his open casket before he was laid to rest. But then there’s the legend. The real rabbit hole. You start reading the plaques, and just when you think it’s settled—buried here by his own request—you overhear someone mutter, “He’s not really here.”

A local leaned over the stone wall and told me straight-faced, “He’s buried in Cody, Wyoming. This one’s just a decoy.” He said it like it was gospel. And he’s not the only one. There’s been a long-running feud—part pride, part folklore—between Denver and Cody over where the man actually rests.

The story goes like this: Buffalo Bill may have wished to be buried in Cody, the Wyoming town he helped found. But after his death in Denver in 1917, his estranged family made a deal with Colorado officials, possibly lured by money and guaranteed pageantry. Denver gave him a massive sendoff. The body was laid in state. Boy Scouts were stationed as guards. And they buried him up on Lookout Mountain—supposedly encased in concrete to stop anyone from moving him.

Except maybe that didn’t work.

The Body-Snatching Legend of Buffalo Bill

I got to Researching around some reputable websites later, digging into whether or not Buffalo Bill is actually in Buffalo Bill’s grave. Turns out, there’s a whole legend behind the stone marker I’d been standing next to.

On January 14, 1917, Buffalo Bill’s casket was paraded through the streets of Denver to the Colorado State Capitol, where more than 25,000 mourners paid their respects. After a service at the Elks Lodge, he was taken to Olinger Mortuary. Records show he was buried on Lookout Mountain with a crowd of over 20,000 in attendance. His casket was open. The ceremony was public. Final. Or so it seemed.

But back in Cody, Wyoming—the town Buffalo Bill himself founded—folks weren’t buying it. According to them, he had long wished to be buried on Cedar Mountain, overlooking the valley and the people he loved. When word got out that his wife Louisa had accepted an offer from the Denver Post and the city to bury him on Lookout Mountain in exchange for two $10,000 payouts, Cody’s residents were shocked. Furious, even. But that was just the start.

Three of Bill’s friends—his undertaker Fred Richard, and two others—hatched a plan. When a local ranch hand died and his body went unclaimed, they trimmed his beard into the Buffalo Bill style and set out on a two-and-a-half-day trip to Denver.

They arrived at the mortuary, introduced themselves as old friends, viewed the body, then came back later that night. According to legend, they pulled off a full body swap—leaving the ranch hand in the mortuary and taking Buffalo Bill back to Wyoming, where they buried him quietly on Cedar Mountain. The location was kept secret, shared only with a few. But the view, they say, looked out over the whole town—just the way Bill would’ve wanted it.

Now, they couldn’t just sneak back without stirring suspicion. So they started a full-on diversion: hit every one of Cody’s thirteen saloons, riled up the town with whiskey and outrage, and convinced more than 350 armed residents to caravan down to Denver to “bring Buffalo Bill home.”

Denver authorities got wind of the plan. To protect the grave on Lookout Mountain from tampering—or to make sure no one could discover anything—they poured 20 tons of concrete over it. When the caravan arrived, they were told to stand down. Defeated, they returned home. But many of them believed—and still believe—they’d already succeeded.

Standing there at the grave, reading the plaques and wondering just how far this rabbit hole goes, I couldn’t help but smile. Colorado’s full of this kind of thing—where the past isn’t quite past, and even the dead might not stay where you think they are.

My teammate, meanwhile, had made fast friends with a local who’d driven a right-hand-drive Nissan R32 Skyline GT-R —yes, Godzilla—all the way up the mountain. That’s the kind of weird and wonderful mix you get on a Colorado mountaintop: ghost stories and JDM legends, prairie spirits and turbochargers.

Eventually the sun gave up, the time-lapse wrapped up, and I made my way back down into the city lights. But something in me stayed up there for a little while longer, lingering with the bison breath and the wind over Buffalo Bill’s grave—or somebody’s grave, anyway.

To borrow a line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:
“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
And maybe—just maybe—steal the body, too.

Until Next Time, Partner…

The road keeps twisting, the skies keep shifting, and the stories—well, they just keep getting better the higher up you go.

Whether it’s buffalo that roam, Godzillas that growl, or legends that just won’t stay buried, Colorado’s full of that wide-open, high-altitude magic that makes even a short afternoon feel like a full-blown frontier saga.

So here’s to chasing light through the clouds, to listening real close for the truth under the gravel, and to whatever mystery waits around the next bend.

I’ll keep wandering. You keep reading.

—Nate