Cheyenne (city, Wyoming)

Cheyenne (city, Wyoming), capital city of Wyoming and seat of Laramie County, in the southeastern part of the state, on Crow Creek. The largest city in the state, Cheyenne is the commercial, manufacturing, and shipping center for the surrounding cattle- and sheep-raising area. Major manufactures include refined petroleum, chemicals, fertilizer, restaurant equipment, and petroleum products. Points of interest in Cheyenne include the domed state capitol (designed 1887) and the Wyoming State Museum and State Library, which are housed in the Supreme Court building. In addition, the historic Governor's Mansion, built in the Georgian revival architectural style, served as the home of Wyoming's governors from 1904 until 1976. The mansion's residents included the first woman governor in the United States, Nellie Tayloe Ross, who served from 1925 to 1927 after being elected to fulfill her late husband's term. A community college is located in Cheyenne, and Francis E. Warren Air Force Base (formerly Fort D. A. Russell) is nearby. It became the headquarters of the first United States Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile base in 1957. Frontier Days, an annual festival and rodeo celebrating the old Wild West days, originated in Cheyenne in 1897.

First inhabited by Native Americans of the Cheyenne tribe, for whom it is named, the community was permanently settled by whites and incorporated as a city soon after a division point of the Union Pacific Railroad was located here in 1867. In 1869 the city was selected as the capital of Wyoming Territory, and in 1890, when Wyoming entered the Union, Cheyenne was made the state capital. The community grew in the 1870s with the opening of the nearby Black Hills gold fields and became one of the major distribution points for cattle from Texas. Population 47,283 (1980); 50,008 (1990); 53,011 (2000); 55,731 (2005 estimate).