Frontier Days began as a rodeo, with the contests held on the plains outside town. Nine of them, to be exact, starting at 1:15 p.m. The centerpiece, of course, is the rodeo. Teddy Roosevelt rode here, and Damon Runyon remarked upon "the most picturesque crowds I have ever witnessed, where the reproduction of the wild and wooly west is presented each year." Lately a tour to Frontier Days has even been sold through Bloomingdale's winter catalogue. In similar fashion, Frontier Days has come back from worse before, including a 1979 tornado that destroyed 100 homes and the 1978 crash of an Air Force Thunderbird that killed the pilot and two bulls.sw sk
The basement and first floor of the Plains were gutted by fire this spring, but repairs are being made and the owner has promised to reopen the hotel in time for the celebration - so there may again be cowboys riding horses through the lobby. He gets Christmas cards from all over the country and his picture hangs on the "Wall of Fame" at Gilley's cowboy bar in Houston. The cowboys are fond of Spencer, who grew up in Cheyenne and worked as a busboy at the Plains Hotel (the scene of some notorious drinking bouts) before joining the police. They know they can blow off some steam and as long as the place doesn't get broken up, we'll still be friends." "If they swing from the chandelier they realize they'll pay for the damage. Spencer, known far and wide as the cop who keeps the cowpokes in line. They'll be drinking some of the 1.5 million cans of beer to be downed during the week, stepping to the tunes of Rocky and the Red Streaks and keeping a watchful eye for Sgt. The Cheyenne Club and the Mayflower Bar will be packed each night with real cowboys and earnest greenhorns, dressed alike in denim jeans and yoked shirts and boots of leather, boa, ostrich and anteater. But even if it's not authentic, the 90thannual Frontier Days, July 18 through 27, should be a fine place to be. "I was amazed, and at the same time I felt it was ridiculous: in my first shot at the West I was seeing to what absurd devices it had fallen to keep its proud tradition."sw skĪbsurd, yes. suddenly we were bucking through a great crowd of people that poured along both sidewalks," wrote Jack Kerouac in "On the Road," describing the 1947 version of Frontier Days. "As the truck reached the outskirts of Cheyenne. It's a time when those inhabitants of the new, urban West - a region where Subaru hatchbacks have replaced the palomino as the preferred mode of travel - try to recapture lost glories in a week and more of cow-punching, bronc-riding and hell-raising. For 10 days in July, however, the Green City of the High Plains lives up to its more casual and historic nickname: Hell on Wheels. Warren Air Force Base, one of the future homes of the MX missile. is just another stop on the Interstate, two hours north of Denver - a sleepy western capital whose greatest claim to fame is the Francis E. The Whooperoo: Cheyenne Frontier Days.įor 355 days a year Cheyenne, Wyo.
CHEYENNE WYOMING FRONTIER DAYS 1970S CHARIOT RACES PROFESSIONAL
That's the way things go each summer at the oldest and largest professional rodeo in the world. If ace rodeo cowboy Larry Mahan hadn't grabbed the band's microphone and passed his 10-gallon hat to raise her bail, there might even have been trouble.
Three sheets to the wind, she was, and got to taking off her clothes and dancing on the bar, right there in downtown Cheyenne.Īs a member of the local constabulary, Spencer had no choice but to arrest her, and it spoiled his popularity for some time. Wayne Spencer, he of the 19-inch neck and bulging biceps.