Horsepower in Laramie
There was a different look to Laramie streets before automobiles. Where the trains didn’t go, horses provided transportation until autos finally took over. Laramie’s Elmer Lovejoy test drove his horseless carriage invention on the unpaved city streets in 1898. Not too long after that, horses and cars began to share the road. Abandonment of horses was gradual; a newspaper report says that New Method Laundry, then where Killian Florist is today, purchased its first gas-powered truck in 1916.
In the horse-and-buggy days, the livery was an exciting place to hang out. There was always something happening as stages and travelers arrived and departed; pick-up work was often available—someone had to be there round-the-clock. There was “pick-up” work to do in the dirt streets too, manure was abundant.
Delivery Wagons
Nearly every retail store in downtown Laramie had a delivery wagon and driver. Town residents had their grocery orders delivered to the door. The first job of the driver was to go to the livery to hitch up the horse and wagon. As Jay Talbot comments, hitching up a single horse to a wagon could take five minutes if the horse were well-trained and stood quietly. Ray Garson points out that if two horses were to be hitched, the process was more complicated and time-consuming. Poorly trained or restless horses could easily mean a long day for drivers.
Once hitched, the driver went to the depot to pick up wholesale goods delivered by train. Then, to the store to deliver them to the merchant. The freight depot area and downtown streets would be full of horses and wagons as the drivers waited for their loads. Then they were off to deliver the goods to the back doors of homes.
Delivery horses sometimes became famous for their ability to know where to go, needing only a nudge to head back to the livery, whether the driver was awake or not. One such treasured horse was Stella, who pulled Ferdinand Brueckner’s plumbing wagon. Stella unfortunately died around 1890 in a flash flood when tethered along Spring Creek, which at that time was near the front of the Brueckner’s home at 4th and Park Streets. Brueckner had her hide made into the carriage blanket now on exhibit in the Laramie Plains Museum.
Drivers
Some drivers had a good background in horsemanship; others did not, judging from the frequent reports of mishaps in the newspapers. There were lots of things that might spook an otherwise docile horse into taking off on a wild spree through town. Loads got scattered, drivers were knocked from their perches and often injured as wagons overturned.
On October 4,1883 the Boomerang report of an accident was probably written by the paper’s founder Bill Nye. The account says: “For the ninety-ninth time, Dairyman Dunning’s milk cans have been spread out upon Laramie’s boulevards…. The wagon lay bottom side up, the wheels still spinning around with frightful rapidity. Stretching away back into the dim distance was a row of milk cans glistening in the fading twilight like molten silver—or polished tin—while the ground was saturated with milk in every direction.”
An 1889 Boomerang report mentioned that grocer A.S. Peabody’s colt attached to the delivery wagon “made things lively this morning as its heels flew up in sixteen different directions” with a wild scamper down 2nd Street. “It veered into the alley between Attorney Symons building (204 E. Ivinson) and Dr. Miller’s building, which was badly broken in.” The wagon was sent high in the air, according to the newspaper.
There were dozens of newspaper stories of spectacular runaways. Even as late as 1916, a horse got spooked by a new steam whistle at the laundry and took off. Experienced drivers probably held onto the reins and eventually prevailed, while the less experienced jumped or were thrown off, leaving it to pedestrians and other rigs on the streets to get out of the way as best they could.
A weight on a rope attached to the horse collar could be dropped to the ground, in lieu of a hitching post for quick stops. In downtown Laramie the boardwalks were raised 18 inches or more above the street, making a hitching post inconvenient at the boardwalk level. Instead, Laramie native Rusty Jairell says that a metal ring with pin was installed at intervals just under the wooden sidewalk. One of these hitches is in the photo attached, though it is barely visible.
Races
Just as drag racing on city streets sometimes happened when young drivers got into cars, there were times when delivery wagon drivers would challenge each other to races on city streets.
The Laramie “Driving Park and Fair Association” provided an outlet for that energy. The Boomerang for August 17, 1895 reported bets would be taken for delivery wagon races in which five horses would compete. They could be hitched to “any kind of vehicle except pneumatic sulkies.” (Newly invented air-filled tires apparently gave an advantage over metal or wooden wheels.)
For the races, there were three half mile heats, with the best going on to a final race, which was won by E.D. Kelley with a time of 1:35 minutes. The paper said that the race track was “east from the new plaster works,” probably east of today’s Corona Village restaurant, along Boswell Drive.
Delivery wagon races were mentioned in the Cheyenne Daily Leader as late as 1908 when the program for July 4th events included them, and again on September 8, 1908 for Labor Day races. The last vestige of this sport was probably the Chuckwagon Racing that once took place during Cheyenne Frontier Days and is still practiced in Canada.
Cowboys in the early days of Laramie were usually good with horses, but, as the late local ranchwoman Shirley Lilly said, most didn’t own a horse, despite the image presented in films. The horses cowboys generally rode were owned by the ranch. There were exceptions, and saddles were often the prizes in early competitions.
Wyoming historian T.A. Larson noted in his 1978 book “History of Wyoming” that the Wyoming Stock Growers Association adopted a resolution in 1885 forbidding horse racing and gambling at the roundups because it destroyed the horses and wasted valuable time.
Livery Stables
Laramie consistently had three or four livery stables downtown between 1868 and 1905. Almost all local retailers stabled their horses and wagons there. Visitors arriving by horse needed a livery.
The first stable advertised near Laramie was “Sanders Stable” three miles south at Fort Sanders, which advertised in the Frontier Index on May 22, 1868, just weeks after the first train arrived. It had been established by the military fort sutler, John Wanless, who came to the area in 1867.
A rundown of some other liveries I have found include two near the depot in 1868, then at what is now 1st and Ivinson. Soon flies and smells brought complaints from restaurants in the vicinity so stable owners relocated. Thomas J. Dayton moved his to 400 S. 2nd by 1870, becoming Harrison & Dayton’s. It was struck by lightning in 1878—there is no further mention of it in newspapers.
William Hunt’s livery started near the depot in 1868 but relocated to 201 E. Kearney within a few years. Another stable, John A. Wright’s was advertised in 1870—somewhere on S. “B” Street, now Grand Avenue.
J.M. Ingersoll advertised the opening of a livery stable and corral in 1872. It was probably at the corner of “A” Street (Ivinson Ave.) and S. 3rd; it was there when he advertised it in 1886. Later, the site became University Filling Station and it is now an automotive repair business.
Diagonally across S. 3rd Street, another stable, the Laramie Livery and Sale Stables, was operated by the Elkhorn Horse and Land Co. Proprietor A.T. McLaughlin advertised it in the Boomerang on May 18, 1893. It probably was known earlier as the Elkhorn Livery. It is the one where Tom Horn said he stabled a horse in 1901, providing an alibi proving he couldn’t have been at the site of the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell in Laramie County that same day. Horn was hung for that murder in 1903 after a sensational trial. In June of 1901, sale of the Elkhorn “barn” to Charles Oakley was noted in the Laramie Republican paper.
Winona, Minnesota, a town of 10,000 in the 1880s, was reported to have stable space for 275 horses, and 25 stable employees. Albany County had about half that population in 1880, but Winona’s figure gives an idea of what Laramie’s needs might have been. In addition to the horses, there was bunk space in the liveries for employees.
In 1882, A.L. Haines opened The Windsor, a brick livery where the BMO bank is now. Haines and two others were found guilty of fraud in the sale of 33 horses as reported in the Boomerang on November 15, 1886. The three were sentenced to the Joliet, Illinois penitentiary. Before the transfer, Haines died in the Albany County jail in February of 1887.
The livery stayed in Haines estate and became “Harry P. Anderson’s Feed and Livery.” The 2-story structure burned in a fire reported on September 9, 1899. The Boomerang report on the fire said: “At one time during its earlier history the office of The Boomerang was located in its second story.”
On January 9,1886 an ad appeared for “The Windsor Boarding and Sale Stable, Knadler & Rand, Prop’s,” apparently an appropriation of the name but across 3rd Street—south on the east side of 3rd from Garfield to Custer. January 9, 1890, the Douglas-Willan Sartoris Co. advertised that they were managing the “Windsor barn”. In March they leased it to C.C. Frazier; it closed in December of 1915 when an auction disposed of the horses and carriages. The Moose Lodge is there now.
There was a U.S. Mail and Stage Station at 508 Fremont that extended all along the west side of the alley between Fremont and University. It was still shown on a 1914 map of Laramie, but is not shown on an 1885 Laramie map, so it was probably built after that date. This and the Windsor may have lasted longest into the 20th century of all Laramie commercial liveries.
Horses in town
Until Laramie got streetlights in 1886, a moonless nighttime walk could be treacherous and may have been best done with a horse. Laramie newlywed, Hanna Durlacher, recalled walking from her home at 501 S. 5th Street every night in the 1870s with a lantern to escort her merchant husband Simon back home. His name is still on the cornice of what was Durlacher’s men’s wear store at 203 S. 2nd Street.
There are still a few barns in Laramie. One is at 611 University Street, now remodeled by the Laramie Plains Museum to contain two much more luxurious short-term vacation rental units. Another is behind the 1887 Wallis family home at 319 S. 8th Street—the barn entrance is on Garfield. Outbuildings like these might have been called “carriage houses” later, with a suitable horse rented when needed. After 1910, many became garages for automobiles, as the horse and buggy days faded away in Laramie.
By Judy Knight
Caption: In 1892 the Boomerang reported that “C. Klein, proprietor of Laramie Steam Laundry, has a beautiful new delivery wagon.” This photo may have commemorated it and the nearly all-female employees. A phone number on the wagon dates the slightly damaged photo to no earlier than 1882 when Laramie’s telephone service began. Note the raised boardwalk with access plank over a ditch for pedestrians. Beside the seated woman on the left, below the boardwalk, a short hitching device ring and peg can be seen at the edge. The site, at 112-116 E. Garfield Street, is now occupied by Undercover Bed and Spa in a new building. The building pictured was probably lost in the 1948 Holliday fire that destroyed parts of three downtown blocks. Photo Credit: Laramie Plains Museum.