Cheyenne, Wyoming: Where Cattle Barons Built Their Club

Why did cattle barons gather in Cheyenne?

Cheyenne owed its start to the Union Pacific, whose surveyors routed the line through the town rather than Denver. After the Union Pacific tracklaying crews left, the town recovered and prospered on cattle. John Wesley Iliff started a cow camp five miles south of town in 1867, and by 1871 an estimated 60,000 cattle grazed within 100 miles of Cheyenne.

That early start drew money. Notable stock raisers included Francis E. Warren, Joseph Carey, Charley Hutton and the four Swan brothers, and territorial governors invested in livestock too. By 1880 Cheyenne had about 3,000 residents, eight of them millionaires, according to the Wyoming State Historical Society.

The Cheyenne Club

The club opened in 1880, built with cattle money at 17th Street and Warren Avenue. Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association formed its core, and many were young men from prominent East Coast, British and European families. A History.com account says its rules banned betting, fighting and card cheating, and describes members drinking fine wine and eating oysters. Horace Plunkett, an Anglo-Irish cattle owner and member, wrote that cordial drunks were common there.

The city built an opera house in 1882 and was among the first in the United States with electric streetlights, evidence of how much the cattle trade had put into town.

The Wyoming Stock Growers Association

The association, founded in 1872 by one account and 1873 by another, became one of the most powerful political organizations in the West. Wikipedia calls it the de facto territorial government and says four members served in Congress alongside several governors and most legislators. It registered brands and hired detectives against cattle thieves. Goodnight's drives from Texas reached Cheyenne in 1868 through a contract with Iliff, and Longhorn-stocked ranches later spread across Wyoming.

The Big Die-Up of 1886-1887

By 1886 about 1.5 million cattle were on the Wyoming range, and prices were falling: Chicago wholesale prices dropped to $3.16 per hundredweight in November 1886, about half their 1884 level. Two drought summers were followed by a severe winter that buried the prairie under about four feet of snow. History.com says millions of cattle died across the plains and some ranchers lost up to 80 percent of their steers, and that association membership fell more than 80 percent between 1886 and 1890.

The Wyoming State Historical Society gives a lower statewide figure, about 15 percent, with roughly 25 percent in Crook and Carbon counties, so sources differ on how badly Wyoming was hit.

The Johnson County War

On 5 April 1892 a 52-man force left Cheyenne by private train. It included 11 members of the association's executive committee and 25 gunmen recruited in Texas, who were promised $5 a day and a $50 bonus for each man killed. Frank Canton carried a list of 70 names. On 9 April Nate Champion was killed at the KC Ranch, and a posse besieged the invaders at the TA Ranch for three days until President Benjamin Harrison ordered the 6th Cavalry to take them into custody.

Prosecutors dropped charges after failing to seat a jury from 1,064 eligible citizens. Estimates of those killed in the war range from 20 to 40, and it ended in 1893 when the association opened its membership to small cattlemen.

Costs and legacy

The cattle boom left a mixed record: wealth for investors and a political machine that used hired gunmen against small ranchers. The town itself outlived the boom, and by 1909 Wyoming's sheep were valued at $32.1 million against $26.2 million for cattle. For the full record, see the Wyoming State Historical Society article on the cattle boom, the History.com account of the cattle bubble and the Wikipedia entry on the stock growers association. See ranching history at farm.FM and a farm.FM story on Wyoming cattle barons.