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Cheyenne, Wyoming (U.S.)

Laramie County

3:5 image(s) by permission of David B. Martucci
image(s) from American City Flags, Raven 9-10 (2002-2003), courtesy of the North American Vexillological Association, which retains copyright.

Current Flag
Former Flag
Seal
Police Department

See also:

Current Flag

Text and image(s) from American City Flags, Raven 9-10 (2002-2003), courtesy of the North American Vexillological Association, which retains copyright. Image(s) from American City Flags by permission of David B. Martucci.

Design

The flag of Cheyenne has a white field with a brown border and the city’s emblem in the center. On a flag of 3 by 5 feet, the border is 4 inches wide. The emblem, which resembles a seal, is 25 inches in diameter and consists of an outer ring in white edged in brown, and an inner ring in brown, edged in white. In the outer ring appears in brown CITY OF, centered and curved clockwise above, and CHEYENNE, centered and curved counterclockwise below, all 2.5 inches high. In the inner ring appears THE EQUALITY STATE, centered and curved clockwise above and WYOMING, centered and curved counterclockwise below, all in yellow letters 1 inch high. Separating the phrases in the inner ring are two sets of three white stars, the middle star larger than the others. Occupying most of the center of the emblem is a brown bull bison on white, standing in three-quarter profile, facing the hoist with its left shoulder at the center. In the center, below the grass below the bison’s feet, is 1867 in brown, perhaps three-quarters of an inch high.
John M. Purcell, American City Flags, Raven 9-10, 2002-2003

Symbolism

The bison appears on the Wyoming state flag, although depicted differently. The first charter for the government of the city of Cheyenne was adopted in 1867, in what was then a part of the Dakota Territory. Wyoming is called “The Equality State” because of the rights women have traditionally held here. In 1869 Wyoming’s territorial legislature enacted a bill granting women the right to vote, the first government in the world to do so.
John M. Purcell, American City Flags, Raven 9-10, 2002-2003

Selection

Mayor Don Erickson asked his staff to develop a city flag.
Flag adopted: Circa 1985 (unofficial).
John M. Purcell, American City Flags, Raven 9-10, 2002-2003

Designer

Central Services Superintendent Ron Harnish.
John M. Purcell, American City Flags, Raven 9-10, 2002-2003

More about the Flag

The city emblem was adopted officially on 11 July 1994 by the city council, but without the date, 1867, which still appears on the flag. The border on Wyoming’s state flag, although a different color, may have inspired the border on the Cheyenne flag.
John M. Purcell, American City Flags, Raven 9-10, 2002-2003

From www.move2wyo.com/Nav.aspx/Page=%2fPageManager%2fdefault.aspx%3fPageID%3d1420404:

"Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming, a state of the United States of America. It is the principal city of the 'Cheyenne, Wyoming Metropolitan Statistical Area' which encompasses all of Laramie County, Wyoming. As of September 2005, it had an estimated population of 55,362. It is the county seat of Laramie County and the largest city in Wyoming.

On July 4, 1867, General Grenville Dodge with his survey crew platted the site now known as Cheyenne (Dakota Territory, later Wyoming Territory). There were many from a hundred miles around who felt the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad through the area would bring them prosperity. So, by the time the first track was built into Cheyenne four months later (November 13), over four thousand people had migrated into the new city. Because it sprang up like magic, it became known as "Magic City, Queen of the Plains".

Those who stayed and did not leave with the westward construction of the railroad were joined by gamblers, saloon owners, thieves, opportunists, prostitutes, displaced cowboys, miners, transient railroad gangs, proper business men, soldiers from "Camp Cheyenne", later named Fort D.A. Russell (now F.E. Warren Air Force Base), and men from Camp Carlin, a supply camp for all the northern army posts on the frontier.

The city was named by Grenville Dodge for the Native American Cheyenne nation ("Shay-an-nah"), one of the most famous and prominent Great Plains tribes, closely allied with the Arapaho. The Cheyenne were among the fiercest fighters on the plains. Not pleased with the changes brought about by the railroad, they had harassed both railroad surveyors and construction crews.

As the capital of the Wyoming Territory, and the only city of any consequence, as well as being the seat of the stockyards where cattle were loaded on the Union Pacific Railroad, the city's Cheyenne Club was the natural meeting place for the organization of the large well-capitalized ranches, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. (See Johnson County War of 1892, the largest of the "range wars" of early Wyoming history). The newspaper offices of Asa Shinn Mercer's Northwestern Livestock Journal were burned down when the paper, which was founded as a public relations vehicle for the moneyed cattle interests, began to write scathing accounts of the events that were unfolding on the open range. His account is told in his book The Banditti of the Plains, still unavailable in Wyoming.

As a town created by the railroad, Cheyenne fittingly preserves one of the eight surviving Union Pacific Big Boy locomotives ("4004"), some of the largest steam locomotives ever built, designed for hauling freight over the Rocky Mountains at high speeds. These engines typically hauled 100 freight cars up ruling grades between Cheyenne and Ogden, Utah, at 50 miles per hour. The locomotive now resides in a city park."
Valentin Poposki, 19 June 2007