Important caveat: Although I took many photos today my camera did not have a card in it, so pics are more limited today. Grrr!
We had sort of figured that although Cheyenne is the State Capital of Wyoming it would probably be about the same size as Laramie and about as interesting. Well as State Capitals go it is pretty small, but Laramie is even smaller, however we were completely wrong about how interesting it is.
Cheyenne is a fascinating place. It started life as a railhead in 1867 when Union Pacific were building the railroad. It was a tent city, mostly the three B's, beds, bars and brothels. It started about thirty miles to the East, but being a tent city as the railroad grew they picked up their tents and erected them again at the end of the railway. The town stopped moving when it reached a valley, with a small river running through. Whether they couldn't summon the strength to go up the other side, or couldn't get across the river I don't know, but that's where it stopped.
We took a trolley ride round the town, this was driven by and tour guided by a rip roarer of a lady call Val, who gave a very high speed, action packed, yet informative guided tour round the town, telling us about such myths, with a real life, such as Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock. It was quite fascinating and we loved it. She told us of the many tunnels that are under the sidewalks, most of which led to one or another of the brothels (we remembered the same in Pendleton, OR), she showed us the Capitol building, the rodeo fairground and the railroad as well as the buildings in the old part of town.
We ate lunch in the Albany, which looked like a typical railway hotel/tavern and was, i.e. not sparkling, but OK.
After lunch we drove out to the Botanical Gardens, which were nice, but really we wen to see the old loco, the oldest in Wyoming, which is on display in the grounds. Sally got some rally nice pics of goslings and there were some nice garden benches with local scenes built into them.
Next stop was Holliday Park, with a lake with the unlikely name of Minnehaha Lake. Sounds Indian, but was of course the fictional name of the girl in Longfellow's poem of Hiawatha. Anyway we didn't come to see the lake, we came to see the Biggest Steam Train in the world! Big Boy 4004 was built for the Union Pacific Railroad in 1941 to haul the big trains up the long incline to the highest part of the railroad just beyond Laramie. It is a very big engine. We were impressed, but it started to rain, so we jumped back into the chevy and moved on.
Our last stop was at the Cheyenne American Legion Post 6. Why? because the Wyoming Merci Train Boxcar is on display there (See our blog for the last one we saw in Ogden, Utah). Unfortunately it was now pouring with rain. However, I got out of the Chevy and posed for a pic. There was a gentleman working by the boxcar and he came to say 'Hi'. It turns out that he introduced himself as Ken and he is the 'Chef Du Gare' for the local Forty and Eight Society, whose history I have outlined before, they have a special relationship with the Merci Boxcars. we had a great conversation, it seems that he is preparing the boxcar for public display and asked if we would like to see inside, so of course we said yes. He opened the sliding door and we (Ken and I) climbed in (it is quite high up) and had a really good look round. He told us of his plans and we told him what we do, meanwhile Sally was outside the boxcar, in the rain. It really did not seem big enough to take 40 men with their kit, rifle and ammunition, but there it was, a little bit of history. He told us that the gifts from the French were in the State Museum, so as we bid farewell we determined to visit the State Museum tomorrow to see if we could find them.
/> So all in all, apart from the weather, which has been awful anyway ever since we left Phoenix, we really enjoyed Cheyenne and are looking forward to exploring more tomorrow.
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