“There ought to be some sort of a fire organization here,” wrote Editor J.H. Hayford in the Laramie Daily Sentinel, in November, 1870, two years after Laramie’s founding. Luckily, no major fire had yet occurred, but that was no reason to oppose forming a fire department, Hayford reasoned.

In 1898, a few Laramie women put out an announcement that they were calling all interested women to a meeting in the Albany County Courthouse to form a woman’s club for Laramie. Over 100 showed up.

Before there was a railroad in the Laramie Basin, goods were hauled by freighters who owned wagons and draft animals.

In 1940, fifty years after Wyoming was admitted to the Union, the people of Laramie marked that anniversary with a 2-day celebration called “Equality Jubilee Days.” 

A man named Pattee ran a lottery scheme in Laramie; was the scheme legal?

In the 1920s, a Laramie Kiwanis Club member had an idea to develop a picnic area with a water fountain in Telephone Canyon. At that time, the “Lincoln Highway” was mostly unpaved, but the route through the canyon  was the “improved” road to Laramie from Cheyenne, as opposed to the former auto route to Tie Siding and then back up to Laramie.

In 1917 Laramie folk's had learned of the horrors of World War I and the impact it would likely have on their community. But that did not stop them from living their daily lives, including a fine July 4th celebration.

There is an unmistakable sound a steel blade makes on solid ice—and an unmistakable smell of potatoes baking in their jackets in the coals of a big bonfire.  Add the laughter of young people as they glide by teasing each other and you have the makings of an ice skating party—1870’s style, along the Laramie River. 

In 1949, Albany County was savaged by a horrible blizzard.

In the 1860s, pioneers brought seeds to Laramie—sharing cuttings and information on those that survived at our high elevation. Typical of these “heritage” plants are hollyhock, rhubarb, lilac, and yellow rose bushes that continue to thrive in Laramie.

In post-Civil War America, widows whose late husbands were not military veterans usually remarried right away, moved in with one or another of their married children, were taken in by other relatives or became the responsibility of the county where they lived.

Four elegant English dresses found their way to Laramie, probably in the 1920’s.  Why they were brought here is lost to anyone’s recollection.

In Laramie’s early days, fire protection provided by townspeople included barrels of water sitting around corners of buildings and on the roofs. In wintertime, the barrels probably had to go inside or were filled with sand. Blankets and carpets covered the roofs of nearby buildings in the event of a fire

The first people in the Laramie area in 1867-68 included a large number of young men. They lived in hastily-built barracks at Ft. Sanders or dormitories near the Union Pacific Railroad yards for workers.

Once there was a “pest house” in Laramie.

On the London feather market around 1900, an ounce of feathers was worth as much as an ounce of gold. 

Owners of automobiles in Laramie dreamed about driving coast-to-coast in the early 1900s

Was Laramie’s first school bus a Model T?  We may never know for sure, but the Early family of Laramie claimed their mom was the first school bus driver, and that was her transportation.

There was a time when Laramie residents took their lives in their hands to cross from one side of town to the other.