They say you never forget your first drink — and for me, it was legally poured when I turned 19, the drinking age in Wyoming at the time.
As the last state to raise the bar to 21, Wyoming gave young adults like me an early glimpse into the hazy rites of passage that come with adulthood.
I wasn’t much of a partier in college, but grad school at the University of Wyoming and later my first job in Gillette during the coal boom quickly changed that. Suddenly,
I had a steady paycheck, no furniture, and no idea how to spend my evenings in a town with more churches than bars. So when Cheyenne Frontier Days rolled around each July, my housemates and I packed into a car and headed south for a little organized chaos.
4. Old Enough to Drink in Public – As far as I’m concerned, Frontier Days started to go downhill when the Mayflower Bar on 17th Street went rock and roll. It was a wild time back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
I was living in Gillette at the time, and one year, we packed way too many people into a room at the Atlas Motel (also known as the Alias Motel). It provided cheap overflow rooms for the Hitching Post, next door. Now that the motel has been demolished, I can say that we tore the crap out of that room.
The police would block off 17th Street between Capitol and Central Avenues and walk down the sidewalk, wielding nightsticks, banging beer cans out of the hands of pseudo-cowboys wearing huge gold and silver fake trophy buckles.The obligatory circuit was flowing along with the mass humanity from the Mayflower, then the Bluebird, and across the street to the Elks Club and back to the Mayflower, where I would bump into Cheyenne friends I hadn’t seen for years.
There were other spots, including the Cheyenne Social Club on Capitol Avenue, around the corner from the Mayflower. It was a popular cowboy hangout for years before it closed. The storefront has been a variety of restaurants and an arcade.
The Albany Restaurant and Bar, located on Capitol Avenue across from the Union Pacific Depot, and the Crown Bar on West 16th Street, remain mainstays.
The Pioneer Hotel, in the next block west of the Mayflower, was taken over by bikers.
All the CFD gathering points are now on the edge of town at the Cadillac in East Cheyenne. and the Outlaw in South Cheyenne. When the parade ends, downtown turns into a ghost town with tourists and locals heading to the rodeo and the carnival Midway in Frontier Park.
I was an adult when I became curious about the Historic Plains Hotel, a Downtown Cheyenne anchor since the 1900s. Downtown Cheyenne has been unstable since JCPenney moved out to the Frontier Mall years ago.
A retail stampede followed, and the Plains was also trampled. My favorite hotel has changed hands several times and is now just a shadow of its former self.
In 2003, Al Wiederspahn and Mick McMurry, may they rest in peace, along with Bob Jensen, renovated the Plains into a showpiece. Since the time I sold pop at the parade, the Plains Hotel room suite that looked out over the corner of West 16th Street and Central Avenue was where I wanted to watch the parade.
I looked up and marveled at the people who were whooping and hollaring out the windows.
That wish came true for my 50th birthday. The hotel wasn’t fully open, but I rented the room and invited 100 of my closest friends over for Bloody Marys and to watch the parade.
Under the previous management, the Wigwam 2 – an homage to the original Wigwam Bar sort of worked. It was quite small, but fun. I’ll know more when I’m in town for Cheyenne Day. I don’t know what will be in there this year, but it’s a great place to watch the parade.
I imagine the bar-hopping circuit will be much smaller: Albany, Crown, and Elks. There is the relatively new Chop House, which, if they wanted to become the focus, could open up the parking lot to revelry.
Cheyenne Frontier Days started out innocently enough for me, first slinging sodas at the parade and singing along with my mom’s club friends. By the time Phase 4 rolled around, I was clutching a warm beer outside the Mayflower Bar on 17th Street, swapping stories with familiar faces I hadn’t seen since elementary school.
Back then, CFD wasn’t confined to the rodeo grounds. The real action spilled across downtown, and 17th Street buzzed like a rodeo of its own. Now that much of the revelry has moved to North Cheyenne, downtown feels almost ghostly after the parade and before the rodeo.
These days, I toast the good old days with a glass of something a little gentler and memories that grow a bit wilder with each passing year. While the chaos may have settled, the stories sure haven’t.
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