I was the first man to receive a concession of two hundred thousand acres from the Wyoming State Land Board.
I could not get away to the Basin till late in the autumn of 1894, so I formed a partnership with George T.Beck, who proceeded to Wyoming, where he was found by Professor Elwood Mead, then in the service of the State.

There a site was located and the line of an irrigation canal was surveyed.
A town was laid out along the canal, and my friends insisted upon naming it Cody.

At this time there was no railroad in the Big Horn Basin; but shortly afterward the Burlington sent a spur out from its main line, with Cody as its terminus.

In 1896 I went out on a scout to locate the route of a wagon road from Cody into the Yellowstone Park.
This was during Mr.McKinley's first administration.
I went to Washington, saw the President, and explained to him the possibilities of a road of eighty miles, the only one entering the National Park from the East.

It would be, I told him, the most wonderful scenic road in the West.