Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 39

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Excerpt from Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 39: April, 1967Cheyenne is a western realization of an eastern tale of enchant ment, wrote a Chicago newspaperman in 1867. It is a city that sprang into existence in a night, in obedience to the waving of a magician's wand over a patch of wild buffalo grass. The magician was American enterprise, this wand resembled a bar of railroad iron a thousand miles long.1 This rhetorical statement captured some of the melodrama of the founding of Cheyenne and the other instant communities along the path of construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. Between 1866 and 1869 a string of these end of-track towns suddenly appeared as a result of the notorious hell-on-wheels - the migrating construction camp and the human birds of prey which followed it. In Cheyenne's rapid rise was re-enacted the drama that had produced previous terminal towns such as North Platte, Nebraska and Julesburg, Colorado. Many of Cheyenne's residents during the fall and winter of 1867-1868 were graduates of these chaotic communities. Cheyenne, however, was to become much more than just another temporary stopping place for this motley crew. From the very beginning, Cheyenne's destiny appeared brighter than that of its predecessors. The company promised to make this an important railroad town, and the strategic location seemed to guarantee a great future as a distributing center.The founding and growth of cities like Cheyenne was an essential part of Western development. Many settlers came west Specifically to make their fortunes in these new cities and were often as excited about the prospects of their city as were others about gold rushes or the opening of new agricultural regions. In this respect the story of early Cheyenne is the story of all western boom towns.Like many of these towns, Cheyenne was founded because of the actions of a large eastern corporation. Of the individuals involved first place must be given to the chief engineer of the Union Pacific, This article is a summary of the first three chapters of a study of Cheyenne to 1885 which the author is preparing for publication.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.