laramie county

In January 1966, James W. “Jim” Byrd became the first Black police chief in Cheyenne—and in Wyoming. Over a 25-year career he helped modernize the Cheyenne Police Department and went on to serve as a Wyoming highway safety director and U.S. Marshal. Read more about this quiet trailblazer in Wyoming public life.

Union Pacific locomotives still rumble through Cheyenne, as they first did 150 years ago. But after the railroad arrived in November 1867, skeptics questioned whether the town would last, as so many other end-of-tracks communities had died once the graders and tracklayers moved on.

Home to 19 of Wyoming’s first families, the Historic Governor’s Mansion was occupied from 1904 through 1976, opened to the public in 1977 and extensively renovated in 2004.