The Cheyenne Frontier Days Train: 17 cars, at least 200 cowboy hats.
Hats, ranging from traditional to corduroy and hot pink, were the uniform of the day for many of those who rode The Denver Post train to the Frontier Days rodeo Saturday for a day-long celebration of the American West.
About 750 people had tickets for the trip.
But it’s likely that a few were left behind when the train pulled out of Union Station at 7 a.m. for the three-hour trip to Cheyenne, where riders stopped at a street parade before heading for the Frontier Days rodeo, the “Daddy of ’em All.”
The train ride dates back to 1908, but the train stopped running in 1970. The tradition was revived in 1992 to celebrate the 100th birthday of The Denver Post. Today, the trip sells out every year, and spectators line the tracks to videotape and wave at the train as it passes.
“I don’t know if it’s nostalgia from back when things were better or what, but I know we make an awful lot of people happy,” said Lynn Nystrom, one of the train’s engineers.
This year, one couple got engaged during the trip.
“I wanted her to remember the scene,” said Henderson resident Bob McGee, 46, who proposed to Velva Whitby, 57.
Train cars, like The Portland Rose and the Missouri River Eagle, take their names from famed passenger trains from the days when rails were the main means of getting around the country. The steam locomotive pulling the train, No. 844, was the last one built by Union Pacific Railroad in 1944.
The train ride provides a connection to our past, when Wyoming and Colorado were cowboy country, said William Dean Singleton, publisher of The Denver Post and chief executive of Denver-based ap Inc.
“It’s the one day of the year when we get to go back and celebrate our heritage in Colorado,” Singleton said.
Riders were greeted by an Old West-themed parade once they reached Wyoming, in which horses pulled covered wagons and float riders dressed as pioneers.
Patty Kelly and Kathie Chadwick were crossing their fingers that their float to promote the local theater company took first place for the third year in a row.
It featured a damsel in distress tied to a sawmill by a dastardly villain.
“I grew up here and I remember the old building and the Western culture when I was a kid. It’s a chance to be a cowboy or a cowgirl again,” Kelly said.
Staff writer Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer can be reached at 303-820-1316 or awittmeyer@denverpost.com.
