The Cheyenne Club was incorporated in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, at a moment when the city was emerging as one of the most important centers of the western cattle industry. Created by prominent livestock operators and businessmen, the private organization reflected the extraordinary concentration of capital that cattle ranching brought to Cheyenne during the late nineteenth century. Its incorporation marked more than the creation of an exclusive social institution. The club became closely connected with the economic and social leadership of Wyoming’s open-range cattle era.
The club developed from an informal organization known as the Cactus Club, formed in June 1880 by a small group that included members of the Sturgis family and other prominent cattlemen. The Cheyenne Club was formally incorporated on September 22 by Philip Dater, James Dater, William Sturgis Jr., N. R. Davis, H. G. Hay, Thomas Sturgis, William C. Lane, C. M. Oelrichs, and E. B. Bronson. Its articles of incorporation stated that its purpose was to establish and maintain a pleasure resort and place of amusement. Membership was deliberately limited. An early plan restricted membership to fifty, while the initial entrance fee was $50 and annual dues were $30. By November 1880, the entrance fee had increased to $100.
The club arose during a major expansion of Wyoming’s cattle economy. Cheyenne had become a transportation, financial, and administrative center because of the Union Pacific Railroad and its position within the expanding livestock ranges of southeastern Wyoming. By 1871, an estimated 60,000 cattle grazed within approximately 100 miles of Cheyenne. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association had been organized in 1872, and Cheyenne became its principal center. During the early 1880s, large cattle companies financed by American and European investors established headquarters in the city. In 1882, Wyoming’s six counties reported 476,274 cattle valued at nearly $7 million on territorial tax rolls.
Members of the Cheyenne Club belonged to the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, linking the private institution directly to the organized cattle industry. Wealthy ranch owners from the eastern United States and Great Britain were prominent within Cheyenne’s livestock economy. Among the cattlemen associated with the city during this period were Francis E. Warren, Joseph M. Carey, Alexander H. Swan, Amasa R. Converse, and other operators whose businesses controlled extensive herds and grazing interests throughout Wyoming and neighboring territories.
Construction of a permanent clubhouse began after incorporation. Excavation started during the fall of 1880 at Seventeenth Street and Dodge Street, the latter later renamed Warren Avenue. The clubhouse was completed in 1881. The substantial building included parlors, a dining room, reading facilities, billiard rooms, sleeping rooms, kitchens, wine storage, and other accommodations. Contemporary descriptions and later archival research document hardwood floors, expensive furnishings, carpets, and carefully appointed interiors that followed the model of private gentlemen’s clubs familiar to wealthy eastern American and British members.
The Cheyenne Club occupied an important place in the social organization of the cattle industry. Ranch owners frequently maintained business headquarters in Cheyenne while their cattle ranged across vast areas of the territory. The National Register of Historic Places documentation for downtown Cheyenne identifies the club as a political, social, and economic center of the cattle industry. Its presence also illustrated the transformation of Cheyenne from the temporary railroad settlement established in 1867 into a territorial capital with banks, substantial commercial buildings, large residences, and institutions supported by livestock wealth.
The economic conditions that sustained the club weakened dramatically during the second half of the 1880s. Cattle prices declined, ranges suffered from drought and overstocking, and the severe winter of 1886–1887 caused catastrophic livestock losses across the northern plains. The open-range cattle boom ended, and many large operators reduced their holdings, reorganized, or left the industry. Membership and financial support for the Cheyenne Club consequently declined.
The clubhouse nevertheless survived long after the peak of the cattle boom. Ownership and use changed as the original organization weakened. The building eventually served the Club of Cheyenne, the Cheyenne Industrial Club, and the Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce. In 1936, after more than half a century as a prominent structure at Seventeenth Street and Warren Avenue, the building was demolished.
The incorporation of the Cheyenne Club on September 22, 1880, therefore provides a precise marker for one of the most distinctive periods in Wyoming’s economic history. Its creation coincided with the rise of large-scale cattle investment, the increasing economic importance of Cheyenne, and the consolidation of livestock interests that shaped territorial Wyoming during the 1880s. Its later decline followed the collapse of the open-range system that had produced the wealth supporting it. The club’s history consequently records both the rapid ascent and the eventual contraction of Wyoming’s cattle-boom economy.
References / More Knowledge:
National Park Service. Downtown Cheyenne Historic District (Boundary Increase III), National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. U.S. Department of the Interior.
https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/fff6fa51-1888-401d-adec-930eaaab98f4/
Wyoming Livestock Roundup. “The Cheyenne Club.” Based on Agnes Wright Spring, Seventy Years Cow Country: A History of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. May 27, 2022.
https://www.wylr.net/2022/05/27/the-cheyenne-club/
WyoHistory.org. “Laramie County, Wyoming.” Wyoming State Historical Society.
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/laramie-county-wyoming
WyoHistory.org. “The Wyoming Cattle Boom, 1868–1886.” Wyoming State Historical Society.
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-cattle-boom-1868-1886
WyoHistory.org. “Cheyenne, Magic City of the Plains.” Wyoming State Historical Society.
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/cheyenne-magic-city-plains
University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center. “Luxury on the High Plains: Benjamin F. Davis Papers.” Archives on the Air, December 12, 2024.
https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/show/archives-on-the-air/2024-12-12/luxury-on-the-high-plains-448-benjamin-f-davis-papers
University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center. Robert D. Hanesworth Collection: Collection Inventory.
https://www.uwyo.edu/ahc/_files/pdffa/00171.pdf