Exhibit opens at Planting Fields Arboretum

The little-known connection between William R. Coe, the original owner of the estate that is now Planting Fields Arboretum, and William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody will be explored in a new exhibit opening Friday in Coe Hall at the historic state park.

“Buffalo Bill, Wyoming and the Coe Family” details how Coe visited Wyoming in 1908 to hunt big game and met the famed hunter and Wild West show entrepreneur. The meeting led Coe two years later to buy property from Cody, the Carter Ranch on Lake Irma, not far from the town of Cody that Buffalo Bill founded in 1895.

“W.R. Coe really loved the West and spent summers out there for nearly 30 years,” said Henry Joyce, executor director of the Planting Fields Foundation, which operates Coe Hall.

Coe, who eventually owned more than 200,000 acres, was a founding trustee of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo. He accumulated an important collection of material relating to westward expansion that he donated to Yale University in the 1940s.

The exhibit includes a shirt and gloves worn by Buffalo Bill, one of his saddles and other artifacts.

For more information, go to the Planting Fields website.