55-Year Cheyenne Frontier Days Volunteer Recalls When It Was Wilder

With more than 2,500 volunteers spread across nine different committee cabins, Cheyenne Frontier Days has more helpers than many small Wyoming Towns.

It’s a city within a city — CFD Town, if you will — and like any Wyoming community, the collection of volunteers has its share of old-timers. They are the people who remember how it was when Cheyenne Frontier Days was younger and just a little bit wilder.

Among these old timers is Lynn McColl, who has been volunteering at Cheyenne Frontier Days for at least 55 years with the parades committee, like his daddy before him.

“I was 13 when I started,” McColl told Cowboy State Daily. “These days, insurance won’t allow you to start that young. But it was a whole different world then.”

A whole different world indeed. Starting out, McColl was on the back of a horse most of the time at CFD, and he also helped bring wagon teams out of the yard for the historic carriages long before he was an official volunteer.

“This is a family thing for a lot of the volunteers,” McColl said. “You start out as children here, watching your parents volunteer, and then following in their footsteps.”

McColl’s dad had always helped bring wagon teams out of the yard, so that’s what McColl started out doing, too.

Eventually, he joined the mounted marshals who look after crowd safety during the parade, elevating to second in command of the group. Today, he’s just a regular member of the team, but one with a lot of experience, and a lot of memories.

“I drank my first beer in Cheyenne riding down the street at 13 on a horse,” McColl said. “In those days, you used to run through the Plains Hotel, and they would open a beer and just hand it to you.”

That, of course, has changed since then, McColl said.

“But back then, it was great for the tourists and the crowd,” he said. “I went through, and they never even looked up. Just handed me a beer.”

The Water Fight To End All Water Fights

That’s not even the wildest thing McColl remembers in his more than half century of CFD volunteering.

“We used to set off all our own bombs to start the parade, the wild horse race and all of that,” McColl said. “And I’ve set up bombs and shot them off to start the rodeo, too.”

Among his wildest — and fondest — memories is a CFD Town water fight that nearly spread across Frontier Park.

“We had a cook camp down that way for the wagons,” McColl recalled, waving toward several other cabins that are part of the parades committee neighborhood.

“Someone in the camp threw a glass of water on someone else, and it was just like lighting a fuse,” he said. “Pretty soon this whole park — I mean, everyone from chuck wagon drivers, Miss Frontier, the pickup men, the stock contractors, the tourists — everyone had a water fight going on back here.”

There were even some police officers, in uniform, who participated in the water war — though McColl isn’t naming any names even to this day. There was also a water truck on site watering the track to keep the dust down, which also got pulled into the battle.

“Somebody threw a bucket of water on the guy’s truck,” McColl said. “So, they went and filled it up and came back, and they’re laughing, going, ‘You guys got the wrong guys wet.’”

McColl knew an opportunity when he saw it. He looked at his buddy, who looked back at him, and said, “Well, we’re already wet, so we might as well just take the water truck over.”

The drivers of the truck weren’t hard to convince. They were quite willing to come along with CFD Town insiders to make sure everyone got good and wet.

“That was back in the ’70s,” McColl said. “Nowadays, you couldn’t possibly do anything like that and get away with it. But that was the prevailing atmosphere at the time, and that atmosphere really still lives today.”

There’s A Cabin For That

Name something you enjoy at Cheyenne Frontier Days, and there’s a committee, with its own cabin, that’s in charge of making it happen.

There are nine committees in all — Parades, Concessions, Contract Acts, Grounds, Indians, Military, Operations, Public Relations and Rodeo. Each has its own cabin, located in various areas of the park.

The volunteers of each cabin manage thousands of details that, together, create Cheyenne Frontier Days — the world’s largest outdoor rodeo and a tourist attraction people the world over consider a bucket-list item.

Their work even includes off-park activities, like the free pancake breakfasts and a parade with a historical carriage collection that’s the largest, most prestigious in the world

As a member of the parades committee, McColl has been asked to help with just about everything over the years.

“The thing about the parades committee is we have a large body base, if you will,” McColl said. “So, when other committees need help, we are generally able to step up and help them out wherever they need it.”

One of the fun behind-the-scenes things that happens every year is each cabin creates its own signature drink for a bar crawl.

The parades committee’s signature drink is a root beer float, but there’s a margarita at one cabin, a bloody mary at another — a different drink for each cabin.

“We have a group that every year dresses up as one theme or another,” McColl said. “This year they were prison guards, last year they dressed up like little old ladies, and then they go on a pub crawl to each of the cabins. It’s a good time.

“You hit each of the barns to try their specialty drink. It’s also a good chance to interact with everyone and learn about what they have going on.”

Next Generation

Since its inception in 1897, and his more than five decades of volunteering, Cheyenne Frontier Days has continued to grow and evolve with the times, McColl said.

That’s thanks to a grassroots system where anyone can write a complaint, a compliment or an idea for management to consider.

“They do a retreat in the fall, and they actually review every one of those comments, good or bad,” McColl said. “That gives them a real basis, being in touch with their volunteers and what they’re doing. And a lot of good ideas have come with that over the years. I mean, you can’t have 2,500 people and not have some really nice ideas and viewpoints.”

Family members are also still bringing their children along for the 10 days that CFD town sets up shop.

“There was a picture posted on Facebook of a baby on a horse,” McColl said, smiling. “We start ’em out young.”

McColl sometimes misses some of the events that used to be held as part of Frontier Days, like the chuck wagon races and the late-night campfire singing.

“But we can’t have our feet rooted in the past,” he said. “Everything gets cussed and discussed all year long. Ideas fly, and changes go and then, here about a month before the show everything settles in. Decisions are made, whether you like them or not, and we all join hands and get after it.

“We work hard to put on the very best show we can. And then, when the show is over, we’ll start cussing and discussing next year. It’s just all part of the process.”

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.