William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody—perhaps the most famous American entertainer of his time—made a handful of documented visits to Utah in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That era had Americans looking to and thinking about the West, even as a celebrity culture grew in the East. Cody, the western army scout turned actor, emerged as the best-known celebrity symbol of the West. He rose to prominence as a stage performer and became an international sensation through his Wild West show. Buffalo Bill’s biographers have demonstrated that his persona and performances of created and recreated historical events significantly helped to define the meaning of western history and identity for generations of Americans. Yet in all of this, scholars have given little attention to Cody’s relationship with and portrayal of Utahns and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the 1870s and 1880s some of Buffalo Bill’s routines portrayed Mormons as anti-American threats in the West. But by the 1890s, Cody began to perceive and publicly represent Utah Mormons as model Americans who played a significant role in conquering and redeeming the West, a shift that coincided with Latter-day Saint efforts to gain national acceptance and respectability. This history provides insight not only into the heretofore unexplored visits of the famous plainsman to Utah but also into Cody as an indicator of the evolving perceptions of Utah Mormons in American popular culture. [from author]