Across Lincolnway, where the parking garage is now, stood McDaniel’s Museum & Theatre. Known as the “Barnum of the West,” “Professor” James McDaniel hired a 20-piece band to play in the streets to draw in customers to his amusement hall each evening. Inspired by circus sideshows, McDaniel brought in a 400-pound, 7-foot tall “giantess,” a native American contortionist boy, and even the famous little people General Tom Thumb and his wife, Lavinia Warren to entertain the earliest residents of Cheyenne.

McDaniel was also known for having both stuffed and live animals from all over the world on display, which resulted in unexpected adventures for the business owner. Once, a man smuggled out one of the monkeys (the thief was arrested when he tried to sell it for $5 at a saloon); an enormous grizzly bear escaped its confines (thankfully recaptured in less than an hour!); and a hungry boa constrictor ate most of the collection of curiosities – including a monkey, lots of birds, 2 “Fiji mermaids,” an antelope, and a deer, as well as a “sacred cow!” Can you imagine?

*Don’t forget to take a group picture in front of the Howdy from Cheyenne mural by local artist Jordan Dean! #PairOfPronghorn #CheyenneWY #HowdyFromCheyenne

The downtown area has many original buildings dating back to the earliest days of Cheyenne. However, many of the buildings didn’t survive. Fire was unfortunately a common problem, due to Wyoming’s dry climate and persistent prairie winds, added to the common use of fire for light and heat and new adoption of electricity – as well as the wooden infrastructures in most buildings. In 1870, Cheyenne suffered the “Great Disaster” where 2 entire blocks of businesses burned to the ground! Eventually buildings were built “fireproof,” using more brick and less wood, reducing the risk of fire in the city.

This building, originally the Capitol Avenue Theatre (and later, the Paramount Theatre, namesake of the cafe), still partially stands. The box office and lobby have been converted into a café and art gallery today. However, if you exit the back door of the art gallery into the gardens area, you find where the auditorium stood. This area of the building has burned down not once, but twice (1915 and 1980)! However, the result is an alley full of art to sit and sip delicious drinks.

Which mural is YOUR favorite?

Cheyenne might not make you think of glamorous movie stars, but one night in 1964, the Lincoln Theatre (now called The Lincoln) looked like Hollywood, brimming with the rich and famous in gowns and furs. Central Avenue was closed and filled with fans and reporters from all over the world, hoping to get catch a glimpse of the famous stars that came for the world premiere of “Cheyenne Autumn.” The entire city could see the spotlights shooting up into the sky for the event. The occasion wasn’t strictly for adults – a Cheyenne 8th grader, Steve Johnson, attended all the star-studded dinners and events to write a story for the newspaper he published!

Today, The Lincoln features live musicians from all over the world for audiences of over 1200 people. The owners also support local up-and-coming artists – Lil’ Shy Anne wants to enter in next year’s Battle of the Bands!

Look under your feet! See the glass? These big chunks of glass worked as “skylights” into the storage areas under the buildings. The workers in the buildings would need to take inventory of their supplies, but their gas lamps wouldn’t provide enough light, so the builders added blocks of glass to allow light from above to shine into the basement during the day!

Before this structure (named the Hynds Building) was built, there was a luxurious hotel called the Inter-Ocean. It was owned by an African-American businessman Barney Ford. Ford was a former slave from South Carolina who escaped on the Underground Railroad and eventually traveled out West. The Inter-Ocean Hotel hosted presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt and was considered the finest hotel west of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, it burned down in an electrical fire in 1916.

Wyoming is known as the Equality State, but do you know why? Wyoming was the very first government in the modern world to count votes cast by women. Before 1869, only men were allowed to vote. However, with so few people living in the Territory of Wyoming, the government decided that guaranteeing women’s votes would help the territory develop and give them a stronger voice to the United States government. The law was proposed and passed in the building that stood right here, 50 YEARS before the rest of the United States ratified the 19th Amendment in 1919!

Wyoming was also home to the first females to serve as judge, bailiff, jury, and governor in the United States. The territory also boasted about the availability of female dentists and doctors. Women in Wyoming were no joke – check out the free Cowgirls of the West Museum just around the corner (205 W. 17th St.) for more incredible stories!

This hotel was built as a luxury hotel in 1911. The rooms were state of the art – the Plains was the first hotel in America constructed to feature telephones inside every guest room. The hotel has three elevators, but if you step inside one, you will notice something right away – the elevators are TINY! Local legend says that the architect designed the elevator so small to prevent cowboys from trying to sneak their horses upstairs into the rooms!

The Native American depicted in the Plains Hotel art was a chief from the Arapaho peoples and photographed by the famous photographer, J.E. Stimson in 1900. The chief would frequently stay at the Plains Hotel with his wife and daughter during Frontier Days. Old newspapers covered the native dances on the very same tiles of the lobby space! I think Andy would enjoy joining in with the celebration!

The road you are standing next to stretches all the way from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California! The road (US Hwy 30) was one of the very first continuous automobile highways to reach both oceans and was named after President Abraham Lincoln – the “Lincoln Highway” (renaming 16th Street in Cheyenne as “Lincolnway”). Early on, it would have taken 20-30 days to drive the entire route because drivers could only average 18 mph! Even driving at today’s speeds, it would still take about 2 non-stop days of driving – that’s a long drive!!

Today, most drivers use Interstate 80 to drive from New York to San Francisco. Many sections of the interstate overlap where the original Lincoln Highway route ran, including its highest point, just 40 minutes west of Cheyenne. The rest stop on the summit features a monument with President Lincoln watching the vehicles driving by on I-80.

The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was the reason Cheyenne was established. It quickly grew into a permanent city because the railroad planned for Cheyenne to be a repair station. Thousands of people arrived here by train, many to begin new lives.

Between the years 1854 and 1929, about 250,000 children were sent from large cities in the United States on “orphan trains” to be adopted by new families in all 48 continental states. Before their journey, the kids were often homeless, orphaned, or had very sick parents who couldn’t take care of them. Families with ranches and farms frequently took in the young people to help with the workload on their homestead. The Union Pacific Railroad passed through Cheyenne and so did some of these orphans on their way to a new life. At least 19 children lived with families in Wyoming – and many of them may have stood right inside this very Depot lobby! What do you think they thought about Cheyenne?

What do YOU think about Cheyenne?

No one in the early decades of Cheyenne could make the complaint “There’s nothing to do here!” In fact, there was so much happening, often choices had to be made on which theatre or dance hall to attend on any given night. The trainline made Cheyenne easy to access for traveling performers – and in the early 1880s, Cheyenne held the title of richest city in the entire world, so residents had money to spend on entertainment.

The iconic Atlas Theatre was developed into an auditorium in 1908 and hosted many vaudeville performances, from jugglers and acrobats, musicians and singers, to traveling acting troupes and comedy acts. Appropriately, today the Atlas is most famous for the Old-Fashioned Melodramas (silly Western plays) put on in the summer for Cheyenne Frontier Days. The Lincoln (built in 1929) and the Historic Atlas Theatre are the only remaining theatres still in use from the early days of Cheyenne.

These symbols in the sidewalk next to the curb are called “brands.” A brand is a unique design (like a logo) that each ranch chose, registered with the government, and applied to their cattle and horses using a special piece of iron heated up in the fire.

The brands are sort of like reading a code. Reading the design from left to right and top to bottom, symbols can be “reversed” (printed backwards), “rocking” (has a curve on the bottom like a rocking horse), “lazy” (laying on its side), “running” (has curved flares and corners), “walking” (has small lines for feet added on the bottom), or “flying” (has little lines for wings added to the top). There are many variations, but all the ranchers knew exactly whose cow was whose, just from the symbol on their rump!