Sunday was another sunny beautiful day in Iowa without much wind. Like scouts of old I was determined to find Buffalo Bill's homestead which was 20 minutes from I-80 and located on 230th Ave. and Bluff Road. The Cody Trail is well-marked but it does take a roadmap to get you back to the highway.

The first thing I noticed at Cody's Homestead was a simple log cabin near the entrance to the property. An inscription noted that Bill Cody and his sister attended a pre-school in a log cabin structure like this one, and Bill's trusty three-legged dog named "Skip" followed the young lad everywhere he went. As I drove up to the main house, I saw buffalo grazing on sweet green shoots that had recently sprouted. Bill Cody was nicknamed "Buffalo Bill" after shooting 4280 buffalo in 17 months for food during the civil war.

Isaac Cody - Bill's father - had moved his family from Cincinnati, Ohio to LeClaire in 1841. Bill had been born in a log cabin that overlooked the Mississippi River. The original log cabin had been moved to Cody, Wyoming and all that remained on the site was a marker located on highway 67 in LeClaire.

When Bill was one his father moved the family from LeClaire to the current site where the family lived for three years. The home was constructed of yellow limestone cut into blocks. The underground well water is very hard, so rain water was collected from walnut gutters into rain barrels because wealth during this era was measured by who claimed the whitest wash.

When you tour the house, you'll see the kitchen with a cornshuck broom hanging on the wall. The child's bed next to the kitchen is filled with straw. As you climb the upstair's steps you'll notice the deep indentations in the walnut steps from years of use. There is a middle bedroom with a rope bed and a cylindrical tool to tighten the bed strings. This is where the popular phrase "Sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite" originated from.

There is a sewing room, victorian bedroom, ladies' parlor used for greeting lady neighbors and where women sipped tea and gossiped, a downstair's parlor for the men, and a pioneer parlor and small organ used for entertaining guests. The men would use the Galena day bed to rest after lunch and a hard morning of working in the fields.

In 1883, Buffalo Bill started his Wild West show when he was 37 years of age and it lasted for 30 years. One of his final shows was in the summer of 1911 and was held in Davenport. Dime novels written by Ned Buntline were highly sought after during Buffalo Bill's era. Buffalo Bill had a son named Kit Carson Cody but unfortunately passed away at the age of 7 of scarlet fever. In 1917, Buffalo Bill passed away at the age of 70 and is buried in the city of Golden, Colorado.

Buffalo Bill's legacy of the Wild West will remain and Iowa should consider itself proud to have such a historic figure a part of its prominence.