Lower Capitol Ave.
Above scene looking towards Union Pacific Station, Capitol Avenue Theater on Left, 5 story building immediately
past theater is First National Bank,
beyond that with the clock is the Burlington Depot; on right, side entrance to
the Inter-Ocean Hotel,
now the site of the Hynds Building (see 1920's photo below).
Right, Barney Ford, owner of the Inter-Ocean Hotel
Prior to the construction of the
Plains Hotel in 1910, pictured at bottom of the page, the leading hotel in Cheyenne was the Inter-Ocean Hotel constructed by
Barney Ford (1827?-1902), photo to right. The Inter-Ocean was built by Ford after an earlier hotel burned in 1870.
In 1903, the Inter-Ocean
hosted, among others, President T. Roosevelt on his visit to Cheyenne.
The Inter-Ocean also acted as a principal watering hole in Cheyenne. Tom
Horn observed in his infamous conversations with Joe LeFors (See Tom Horn.):
"If you go to the Inter-Ocean to sit down and talk a few minutes
some one comes in and says, 'Let us have a drink,' and before you know it
you are standing up talking, and my feet get so [expletive deleted] tired it
almost kills me. I am 44 years, 3 months, and 27 days old, and if I get killed
now I have the satisfaction of knowing I have lived about fifteen ordinary lives."
Indeed, after Horn's statements to LeFors, Horn was arrested in the bar of the
Inter-Ocean.
Indians, Frontier Day, 16th Street, looking east from the Tivoli Building approx. 1907. Photo of
Tivoli Building at bottom of page.
The use of the singular in the caption is not in
error. The term "Frontier Days" with an "s" was not officially adopted until 1915.
The first building across the street from the viewer is the Idelman Building.
 Idelman Building approx. 1909
The Idelman Building at the corner of Ferguson (now Carey) and 16th Streets, still in existence, was constructed in
1884 and housed the Idelman Bros. Co., importers and jobbers of liquors and cigars. The company was owned by
Max and Abraham Idelman and later by Max's son Samuel Idelman. Max Idelman (1843-1913) came to Cheyenne from Evanston where he also operated a wholesale
liquor business.
The second building with the bow window on the second floor is the Commercial Block constructed
by F. E. Warren in 1883. The bow window marks the site of the office
in which Tom Horn confessed the murder of Willie Nickell. The third building is the
Warren Building constructed in 1882. At the end of the street in the Inter-Ocean
Hotel. At the extreme right of the photo is another famous "watering hole" of Cheyenne, the
Senate Bar, owned by "Shorty" Evans. Evans advertised his establishment as "The only
second-class saloon in the city." He additionally claimed he sold "The beer that made
Milwaukee jealous." H. P. Hynds, who later built a bank building on the site of the
Inter-Ocean, also owned a saloon which was occasionally frequented by Tom Horn.
On Monday, December 27, 2004, at 10:36 p.m., a fire was reported in the Mary's Bake Shoppe located at 206 West Lincoln
Way (16th Street) in the area where the Wyoming Hotel in the above photo was located. Adjacent to the Bake Shoppe was
the Wyoming Home Furniture Store. The fire spread from the Bake Shoppe into the adjacent buildings. Fire fighters from the Cheyenne
Fire Department, Laramie County, the City of Laramie, the Wyoming Air National Guard, the
Frontier Oil Refinery, and the Pourdre Valley Fire Authority all responded to the
fire which took 18 hours to combat.
Following the fire, the buildings in which the Bake Shoppe and the Wyoming Home were formerly located were determined by the City Building Department
to be dangerous and the City ordered the structures to be razed. Payment of the insurance on the Bake Shoppe was
withheld for some eleven months. Thus, the City itself removed the Bake Shoppe ruins and debris at a cost of
$104,817.14.
Buildings on 16th Steet, approx. 1958.
On March 4, 2005, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported that an accelerant "heavier than paint thinner or turpentine" had been found
in conjunction with the fire. In Febuary 2006, a former employee of Wyoming Home and occasional customer of the Bake Shoppe was taken
into custody by the Laramie County Sheriff's Office relating to some suspicious grass fires. In
questioning by the Cheyenne Police Department, the suspect allegedly confessed that on the evening of the
fire he parked his Jeep on 17th Street between Carey and Pioneer, walked to the Bake Shoppe and entered it. The suspect,
according to the statement, proceeded to
the kitchen and lit a fire. He left, drove about a while,
returning to the scene of the crime, and watched the fire. He contended that he lit the fire becasue the
Wyoming Home Building was structurally unsound. It was later determined that during the course of questioning,
the suspect "unambiguously asserted his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent." Thus, In May 2007, over a year later and after the suspect spent time in
the Larmaie county Jail and was examined at the State Mental Hospital, the charges against the suspect
were dismissed. Without the confession, any evidence tying the suspect to the fire had been
consumed in the flames. The case is therefore officially regarded as "unsolved."
In the meantime, plans for a new elevated walkway from the Carey Street Garage to a proposed new hotel on the
Wyoming Home site and plans for renovation of the Hynds Building came and went, allegedly held up by litigation over the
Bake Shoppe site. The City sued the owner of the Bake Shoppe to recover the cost of the cleanup. The owner
defended on due process grounds and argued that the ovens and other equipment in the building had
great salvage value and had been improperly disposed of by the City in the land fill. The prosecution and
defense of the suit have been accompanied by a war of E-mails and accusations of
slander. In August 2007, a judgment in favor of the City was entered against the owner. That judgment was
appealed to the Wyoming Surpreme Court in September. Thus, as of January 2008, the hole pictured below remains.
Ruins of Buildings on 16th Steet, June 2005. Photo by
Geoff Dobson
The office where Horn made his incriminating statements to Joe Lefors was
located where the bow window is in the building to the left. The Hynds Building is to the right of the
now vacant lot where the Wyoming Home Store and the Bake Shoppe once stood.
View of women voting in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory,
is from an eastern tabloid, Leslie's Illustrated News, November 1888, based on
photograph by C. D. Kirkland. For more on Kirkland, see
Cattle Drives .
Ford started life as a slave in Virginia Various dates and locations of birth are given for Ford,
from 1822 to 1827 with place of birth being given by different sources as
Virginia or South Carolina. Records were generally not kept for slaves. As to Ford's
date of birth, it is doubtful that he himself knew either his age or birthday. The 19th Century escaped slave and
abolitionist Federick Douglass in his 1845 Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself , explained:
I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authenic
record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of
their age as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my
knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a
slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time,
or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to
me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not
tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to
make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the
part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit.
The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age.
I come to this, from hearing my master say, sometime during 1835, I was about seventeen
years old.
Indeed, Douglass was not even sure of who his father was, although it was "whispered that
my master was my father." Although Douglass knew who his mother was, "I never saw my mother,
to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of
these times was very short in duration and at night." Douglass's mother would sneak away at night
from the farm on which she was employed twelve miles away to see her son. If she was not in the
fields at sunrise, she would be whipped. Douglass did not "recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of
day."
Barney Ford's mother was killed during an
escape attempt when Ford was 17 or 18. He himself was able to escape, went to Nicaragua, where he ran two hotels.
His "United States Hotel and Restaurant" was destroyed when the city was
bonbarded. After the destruction of the hotel, he returned to Chicago and then
moved to Colorado in 1860 where he staked a mining claim southeast of
present day Breckinridge. Since Blacks were not permitted to own land in their
own name the claim was placed in the name of his lawyer who promptly stole ownership
of the claim and had Ford evicted. The location was subsequently known as
"Nigger Hill" until 1964 when renamed "Barney Ford Hill."
After the eviction, Ford
engaged in the restaurant and hotel business. Ford also owned an
Inter-Ocean Hotel on the corner of 16th and Blake Street in the
"LoDo" section of Denver. At the time the Lower Downtown was the center of Denver commerce, but after the turn of the
century slowly declined becoming an area in which one would literally have to step
over the recumbent winos in doorways. Indeed, originally when LoDo was the center of commerce,
Ben Holladay, the stageline king, had the center of his Denver operations in the area. A street
was named in his honor. Denver's Holladay Steet became so notorious for its opium dens and parlors of
iniquity that the Holladay family insisted that their name be removed from the
street. It is now known as "Market Street." In the 1970's, the Denver Inter-Ocean was pulled down before
the area has its present resurgence as a trendy area for yuppies.
Ford is generally credited with
precluding the Colorado Consitution from eliminating sufferage for Blacks by successfully
lobbying Congress against statehood until the proposed Constitution protected
the right to vote. In contrast, Wyoming's statehood was delayed because of
its refusal to eliminate universal sufferage. In 1898, Ford was named to the
Denver Social Register, the first Black to be so honored. By the time of his death in 1902,
Ford had amassed a fortune of over $500,000 in 1902 dollars. Today, a brass plaque on
a wall on Blake Street near Coors Field, makes note of Ford and his Inter-Ocean hotel.
The Inter-Ocean burned on December 19, 1916. Six, all from the same family, were killed in the fire including the father
who was killed when he leaped from a third-floor window and fell into live electric wires and
a nine-month old baby who was rescued by firemen but later died from burns. Fifteen others
were saved by firemen.
Tinted view of Capitol Avenue, approx. 1907, photo by J. E. Stimson
Opposite view from that of Lower Capitol Avenue above. Scene is from tower of railroad station, looking towards 16th (now, Lincolnway)
and in the distance the capitol. Burlington Depot on right. On the left, first building is
the Hotel Becker, next is the Normandie Hotel. On the corner of 16th is the Inter-Ocean and
on the corner of 17th is the Cheyenne Opera House. Compare
with identical later views on the nex page.
Tivoli Building, southwest corner of 16th and Carey Ave., 2005. Photo
by Geoff Dobson.
The Tivoli Building was constructed in 1892 and housed a saloon. During prohibition the building was used for
a family department store. Following prohibition it reverted back to a saloon. The building is now used for
a coffee house.
Cheyenne Photos continued on next page.
|