Famous Cheyenne Gunslingers To Be Homeless, Have To Move From Downtown Spot

CHEYENNE — With the 15th Railcar Experience taking over the existing location of the Cheyenne Gunslingers, the beloved Wild West performance that’s become a decades-long tradition during Cheyenne Frontier Days will need to find a new home.

The present downtown home at West 15^th Street and Pioneer Avenue includes buildings made over to look like a Wild West street from the late 1800s, as well as a church that belongs to the Cheyenne Depot, but is cared for by the Gunslingers and makes a good addition to the setting. 

While that new home probably won’t be too far away from the present one, according to Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins, Roger “Lucky” Barnes, who served as the group’s marshal last year during Cheyenne Frontier Days, said he feels differently about that.

His concern, as a prominent member of the group, is that the Gunslingers are getting pushed further and further away from their original mission.

“Originally, we were founded to keep people downtown during Cheyenne Frontier Days,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And if they keep moving us further and further away from the downtown area, then we’re not actually keeping them downtown anymore, right?”

Finding an appropriate area that’s still near the group’s original mission is something Barnes believes remains important to downtown businesses.

They are still competing with newer commercial areas, like that along Dell Range, he feels, where there’s a mall as well as several restaurants, bars, and other commercial establishments.

“The initial thought was to just shove us east, closer to the stables there, so we’re not in the way of the passenger cars,” Barnes said. “That would involve tearing up asphalt and putting in grass and all this other stuff. So, I don’t know if they’re really willing to do that.”

Barnes was later told, in a different city meeting, that it was more likely the group would move further West instead, to a location that Barnes said is about five blocks from downtown.

That’s a bit far to encourage people to walk the downtown area and visit businesses. 

“That’s kind of around where the old pump house is,” Barnes said. “Because they’re thinking about trying to develop that area as well. But that area is quite a ways from downtown.”

Mayor: Still Important To City

Collins told Cowboy State Daily that the Gunslingers are still an important tradition for Cheyenne Frontier Days (CFD) and one that the city intends to keep.

“We are making sure we will have a home for them,” he said. “They might need to move a bit one way or the other, but the site plans do include them as far as I can tell.”

Collins described the group, which acts out a different Wild West shootout scenario every year during the entire month of July, as a “cultural icon” for the visitors and tourists who visit Cheyenne. 

That’s an assessment Barnes agrees with. He’s been with the Gunslingers about 25 years and has seen the popularity continue to grow stronger every year.

Members of the group dress up in period attire and some of them, like Barnes even have period weaponry to use for firing blanks during the show, which each year features a range of different scripts and scenarios that have been written for the group to use, to keep things fresh.

“Used to be, especially during Frontier Days, we’d talk to the crowd before we got started and I’d always ask them, ‘What brings you to Cheyenne?’” Barnes said. “Usually, the answer was Frontier Days. But a couple, maybe four years ago, I started to ask that question, and the answer has been changing. Now they’re saying, ‘We came to see you.’”

That’s heartening for the group, Barnes said. It means that the Gunslingers themselves have become something of a tourist attraction in downtown Cheyenne, which can only help their mission to push more people into exploring businesses downtown.

Barnes estimates during CFD, his group entertains between 350 to 400 people between the two daily shows it will perform during the event, which is billed as the world’s largest outdoor rodeo, drawing people from all over the nation and the world. 

Dell Range Is Still A Force

Downtown Cheyenne businesses have had their struggles over the years, Barnes told Cowboy State Daily and that’s what led to the group’s formation 40 or so years ago. 

“When they built the mall on Dell Range, that almost killed the downtown,” he said. 

Frontier Mall opened 44 years ago in 1981 with anchor stores JCPenney, Sears, and Joslin’s, which was later purchased by Dillards in 1997/98.

Since then, the Dell Range corridor has become one of the most heavily used roads in Wyoming, according to PlanCheyenne.org.

Barnes said finally getting a permanent address for their show was a big help to the group. That not only helped tourists know where to find them year after year, it also gave them a space that wasn’t hard pavement to fall down upon during the show. It was also a space where their buildings could live, even though none of them are meant to be “permanent” structures. 

“Whether we are moving 50 or 500 or 1,000 feet, this is going to be a big deal,” he said. “Where we are now, we are wired in electrically, and the lawn where we do our shootout has a sprinkler system. So, if they want us to continue to do our shows, they’ll probably have to put in some grass for us to fall down on. They’ll need to tear up asphalt and bring in sod, and they’ll want a sprinkler system under that, too, so it doesn’t dry up and die.”

Barnes said he believes the original mission remains important for the downtown, given the national trend, where so many downtowns are struggling, and businesses are dying. 

“I guess if our goal is just to entertain, we could do that anywhere,” he said. “But if our goal is to help merchants downtown, we need to stay close to the downtown. And the areas where we could move to and do a shootout are getting harder and harder to find.”

Contact Renée Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

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