Career
He was a noted explorer, who led an expedition in the 1920s tracing the possibility of a long-ago land bridge between Siberia and Alaska. McCracken, who was then living at 318 Warwick Avenue in Douglaston, New York and completing a book on artist George Catlin, was persuaded to transform an empty building donated by Gertrude Vanderbilt-Whitney in 1959 into the spectacular in Cody, Wyoming. "I wouldn"t undertake it again for all the tea in China," he said, "but I was always interested in challenges.
New library facilities were then opened to the public in 1994.
McCracken retired from the Buffalo Bill Museum in 1974, and continued to live with his family, within sight of the historical center, until his death in 1983.