Barbers and beauticians--making Laramie attractive
When Laramie was founded in 1868, barbers appeared on the scene almost immediately. Not hairdressers--women didn’t routinely get haircuts here until 1915.
Barbering History
No matter the era, men’s hair has needed regular professional attention. It’s not a job for “do-it-yourselfers.” Barbering can be dated to prehistoric times when sharpened seashells were the tools of the trade. Barbers are shown in Egyptian tomb artwork.
At one time there was a close connection between barbering and doctoring and tooth-pulling. Some say that the familiar red and white striped barber pole is a holdover from the medieval days when barbers also specialized in “bloodletting,” the ill-founded barbaric practice of cutting and draining blood to cure disease. The “pole” was for the patient to hang onto when undergoing the ordeal according to the National Barber Museum in Canal Winchester, Ohio. Whatever the source, it is one of very few shop symbolic holdovers from medieval times when many customers were illiterate.
English barber poles have red and white stripes for the blood and bandages of bloodletting; in America a blue stripe is usually added. The director of the National Barber Museum, Mike Ippoliti, pointed out in a phone interview that there is a fine in Ohio for displaying a barber pole without a licensed barber on the premises. The museum displays many different barber poles but doesn’t offer haircuts and welcomes appointments for tours.
Laramie barbers
In Laramie’s first years, 1868-1880, barbershops were concentrated in hotels near the railroad tracks or very close by. Hairdressers were almost non-existent except for one, Miss Minnie Lumbard, a “hair-dresser.” She only appears once in the 1875 Triggs Laramie City Directory.
The earliest barbers in Laramie were “Smith & Wheeler” who advertised in the first Laramie newspaper, The Frontier Index, on May 19 through July 21, 1868 and ran the “Tin Restaurant.” Their ad stated, “meals at all hours day and night, also a first-class barber shop in connection.” It was in the Frontier Hotel on Second St.; the building is gone and Dodd’s Bootery is there today. Soon most barbershops were concentrated on Second St. which has had barbers at 14 different locations downtown, though not all at the same time.
Smith & Wheeler vanished, but in the 1870 Laramie U.S. census, among the five listed barbers, two are identified as Black: William Gale, (M) and Henry Smiley, (B). The census used letters in parentheses to indicate Mulatto, Black, White, and Chinese. Barbering was a common profession for Black men then as it is today, but U.S. barbershops were and are mostly segregated by custom, regardless of the race of the barber.
In 1870, ads begin appearing for barber George P. Goldacker. On May 17, 1870 in the Laramie Daily Sentinel, he said that soon baths would be available and promised clean towels. He moved his barbershop to Cheyenne in 1873 where he also served as the elected Laramie County Coroner.
For six years until 1878, “Rice & Ruprecht” advertised their “Tonsorial Palace under the Laramie Post-Office on Second St.” They parted ways, but continued barbering. Fred Ruprecht (1850-1906) barbered in Laramie for 30 years. Frank Rice (1845-1917) was a barber for 42 years. But the Laramie barber who gets the longevity prize is Bob Jaramillo, who started making Laramie men look good in 1959 at the Center Barber Shop, where he has worked for 63 years.
The number of barbershops in Laramie has generally been over six in all the decades since 1911. From 1941 through 1961 there were at least 10 barbershops listed in directories, some employing more than one barber.
Today there are four Laramie barbershops. They are 7220 Barbershop in a new location at 745 Plaza Court, Center Barber Shop at 406 S. 22nd St., Dukes Barber Co. at 304 S. Second St., and Martin Barber Co. at 512 S. 3rd St.
There isn’t room to list all local barbers, but some not mentioned yet include these in practice before 1900: Emanuel Cardamus (Ft. Sanders), James Comer, Daniel LaBonty, William Lewis, Charles Nissen, Louis Schlumpf, Samuel Spaulding, and John Slatton.
After 1900 came well over 100 more barbers including women. This is a very abbreviated list: Jess Alcala, Archie Barela, Dale Barry, Charles Barson, Bob Bartley, Larry Caldwell, James Comer, Ross Dixon, Frank Greeno, Clint Haley, Bob Hansen, Charles Horton, Bill Hixenbaugh, Lloyd and Gene Lacy (cousins), Andrew Martin, Shawn Miller, Art Munson, Clair Murphy, George Parker, Mary Lou Raymond, Rudy Sanchez, Alton Snider, Domenic Vigil, Vernon Wade (Rock River), Don While (UW Union), and Tom Williams. These and others primarily cut men’s hair. Not listed are the many who worked in shops not called “barber” shops.
Center Barber Shop has been in business in Laramie the longest of the four current barbershops, 63 years, according to the online Yellow Pages. It started in the Odd Fellows Shopping Center on 21st St. with Don Ingalsbe as the proprietor and has moved twice but kept the name. It is a walk-in trade, shaves have been discontinued. The other three all require appointments but do offer shaves. Generally, men go to hair salons for dyeing, bear trims and haircuts, they don’t expect shaves too.
Hairdressers
As a rule, women’s hair was not cut after childhood; the updo was standard after marriage until the women’s short hair revolution in 1915, when the “Bob” was introduced.
Though in Wyoming’s early days women didn’t require haircutting services, one of the barbers who worked in Cheyenne, Charles Schule, advertised on July 14, 1875 in the Cheyenne Daily News that he would “solicit from the ladies of Cheyenne their patronage in his line. He will call at your residence and give your hair a good shampoo and trimming for the lowest price.”
It would have been unthinkable for women to patronize a barber shop, so the in-home service might have caught on. I found nothing like that advertised for Laramie. However, in 1902 Mrs. Margaret Clippinger began to advertise as a hairdresser in her home at 218 Ivinson Ave., which was both her shop and residence. In 1908 another woman joined her as manicurist and “chiropodist” to treat foot troubles.
In 1911, Mrs. Clippinger’s ads mention “hot and cold electric vibrations for drying the hair.” This would have been a welcome development, given how long it would take for women’s long hair to dry before it could be styled into the elaborate up-do styles of the day. She also had a telephone for appointments, something very slow to catch on in barbershops.
There have been too many beauticians in Laramie to report any in the space available here, but the number of shops grew slowly from 1911 when there was one, to 1931 when there were ten in Laramie and one in Rock River. By 1961, there were 20 “Beauty Salons” listed in the Laramie directory.
Fifteen were listed in the 2018 Yellow Pages, including one at 402 E. Clark St., which since 1976 has been known as Bonnie’s Beauty Salon with Bonnie Trabing, then the White House Salon owned by Glenna Trabing and now by Connie McKellep. It may be the address that has been a salon the longest of any in Laramie.
In 1991, a salon called “Guys and Dolls Styling Salon” with Bonnie Athey as proprietor is listed. It is indicative of a new trend in which gender is not a limiting factor for customers. When Guys and Dolls opened, there were 20 beauty salons and six barbershops in Laramie.
Men’s Style changes
There is a huge variety of women’s hairstyles, but styles in men’s hair and beards undergo changes too. For instance, few of America’s founding fathers had beards but by Civil War times, nearly all the leaders had beards.
In the 18th century, men didn’t have facial hair and that on their heads was generally medium-long, pulled back with a ribbon at the neckline, known as a “queue” (French for “tail”). Men might have been short-haired but wore a queue wig when out in public–an odd custom still retained by some in British courts.
In the 1860s, beards became fashionable. A clean-shaven man such as George Washington was characterized by cartoonists as “weak.” Bald men like Laramie’s famed humorist Bill Nye were ridiculed. Nye, however, made merry with self-deprecating humor–his own baldness was good for a joke.
By 1914 as WW I began in Europe, short hair for men became the style, as had been the case for children–mostly to avoid head lice. Lice continued to be an annoyance in the close quarters of the trenches in WW I. Beards disappeared altogether except perhaps for a short mustache. Close-fitting gas masks were essential in WW I and beards prevented a tight seal.
In the past as well as today, barbers and hairdressers often developed a devoted clientele. An intimacy due to the personal contact flourished, something lost with the emergence of commercial chains of haircutting salons where male and female patrons drop in, wait their turn, and take whatever haircutter is free next unless they want to wait longer for a particular stylist. Instead, low cost, convenient locations and hours, and fast service are offered.
National trends
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says that in 2022 there were12,340 employed as barbers. At the same time, there were 298,050 employed beauticians (a category that includes hairdressers, stylists, and cosmetologists). In the 21st century, the line is blurring between barbers and beauticians.
There were fewer U.S. barbers in 2022 than any year in the past decade. The number of beauticians also declined a little recently due to Covid, but overall, the future looks bright for the hair-care profession. The BLS predicts an eleven percent growth in this field over the next decade.
Wyoming has a Board of Cosmetology and a separate Board of Barber Examiners. These are not gender-specific professions; women can go to barbering schools, men can become stylists. The names imply something different, but that isn’t always the case, though it probably was when licensing was required in Wyoming starting in the 1930s.
Because of the crossovers, the words “beauty salon” and “beauticians” are beginning to disappear. Beauty salons imply a strictly female trade. “Styling salon” is a less gender-specific term to replace it.
“Barbershop” is still the word for the mostly male business, though one of the earliest barbers in Laramie persisted in advertising his establishment as a tonsorial “saloon.” Today both men and women go to barbershops or to styling salons. Barbering students can stay in school a little longer to get additional training in hair dying and other cosmetology techniques to become licensed stylists–and beauticians can opt for additional training or testing to also become licensed barbers.
A spot check for every decade of published information on Laramie’s barbers and beauticians through newspaper ads, city directories and U.S. censuses from 1868 until today shows that the hair care trade is something practitioners often stick with for decades. A trend in multi-chair shops is for each practitioner to be an independent contractor, not an employee.
Editor’s Note: Among those who contributed to this story, Phil White notes that more about Black men’s difficulty in getting haircuts in Laramie can be found on pages 5-10 in his 2022 book “Wyoming in Mid-Century,” available at local libraries.
By Judy Knight - Collection Manager at the Laramie Plains Museum
Caption: Laramie barber Lloyd Lacy poses in front of the Connor Barbershop at 305 Grand Ave. probably in 1965, with an unidentified woman. A Boomerang story published in 1965 said that Lacy had just completed “the finishing touches on a false front on his barbershop.” Likely it was to celebrate Jubilee Days, when the boardwalks shown here were installed over downtown sidewalks and merchants were encouraged to look “western.” The temporary sign, among other things, announces “General Barbering, Bloodletting, Teeth Pulled, and Tomcats Altered.”
Photo Credit: (Boomerang collection, Laramie Plains Museum)