One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"Yes, let me get out of your way..."}]

One more for 9 22 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>One More For The Road: Friday, September 22, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Yes, let me get out of your way...

One More For The Road: Friday, September 22, 2023

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

 years old when he learned that a family friend, Bill Carlisle, was one of the most famous outlaws in America. 

Gillian, now 82 and living in Saratoga, said he only knew the Laramie business owner as a good friend of his grandmother, Olive Peberdy, until one day he overheard his grandma and Carlisle chatting casually about the crimes committed in 1916 and 1919.  

Gillian's Grandma Olive was a frequent guest of Carlisle's at his restaurant in Laramie and he said it was a treat for him to tag along. Peberdy was just one of numerous citizens in Wyoming who admired the former outlaw and thought the law had been too hard on him. 

In fact, thanks to this sympathetic public, Carlisle nearly got away with the train robberies in 1919.

“I thought it was neat because they said he robbed the trains with a toy gun,” Gillian said. “That left an impression on me because I played with toy guns, too.”

According to Carlisle in his 1946 autobiography, “Bill Carlisle, Lone Bandit,” he carried a toy glass gun on his first two robberies but also had a real gun. 

Carlisle fired the real gun into the air to prove he was robbing the train when a passenger thought the whole thing was a joke. 

 into the ribs of a brakeman who also thought the robbery was staged — until the toy gun proved otherwise.

Dubbed the Gentleman Bandit by Wyoming newspapermen, Carlisle

had just a nickel in his pocket when he impulsively decided to rob the Portland Rose, a Union Pacific train near Rock Springs.

 He refused to rob the women and even apologized to them for the inconvenience his robbery caused them. Carlisle tipped the porter and successfully escaped.

“He was a local hero,” Gillian said. “He was always so good to the people that he was robbing.”

Carlisle robbed his second train two months later and again was polite as he passed the hat, collecting money from only the male passengers. He escaped again. 

Now with a reward on his head and headlines reporting on his gentlemanly manners, Carlisle was captured near Laramie by a posse. 

He was a hero to a public that demanded clemency but was instead was given a life sentence.

A model prisoner, Carlisle was hopeful his sentence 

 John B. Kendrick. Instead, in 1919, it was reduced to 50 years, which meant Carlisle would have to serve at least 25 years until he was considered for parole. 

If it had stayed a life sentence, Carlisle said, he could have 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Escape By Delivery Truck"}]

Faced with a lifetime behind bars, Carlisle spent the next few months planning his escape. He worked at the shirt factory at the Wyoming State Penitentiary and decided to stow away in a box

. His plan worked and, when it hit the press, most of the public was on Carlisle’s side.

His first night away from the Rawlins penitentiary, Carlisle had dinner at a sheep camp.

“I told the camp tender that I wanted something to eat, that I had taken only what clothes I needed and a rifle and ammunition,” Carlisle later wrote. “He grinned and said it was all right with him, that he hoped I got away, and that I need have no fear of him or the herder.”

He shared a meal with the two men and then, late in the night, Carlisle said he returned to the railroad at Creston with the intention of heading west. However, the posse was searching all the trains heading that direction from the prison, so Carlisle did what appeared to be the only sensible plan. 

He headed back to Rawlins to board a train going in the opposite direction.

Because he now had the sheepherders rifle, Carlisle pretended to be a guard. Carlisle said he joined a group of railroad men in a shack used for breaks. When they all remained quiet, Carlisle relaxed, thinking he wasn’t recognized.

Then one of the men stared straight at Carlisle in his role of guard and said, “I have got my opinion of a man who will hire out for three or four dollars a day to catch Bill Carlisle.”

Another man agreed, cursing at Carlisle about pathetic guards who would search for 

 for a few measly dollars. Not knowing if this was a warning or if they were truly disgusted with someone they supposed was hunting for the escaped convict, Carlisle slipped out of the shack and boarded the train.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Fugitive Guard"}]

Carlisle said the train passed through Hanna, Medicine Bow, Rock River and on toward Laramie as he pretended to keep an eye out for hobos. He had been a fireman on a train three years prior and knew his role well.

When Carlisle was offered a chance to warm up in engine cab, he gladly accepted and joined the engineer, fireman, head brakeman and rear brakeman in the cab.

“Again, the opinion was openly expressed about train guards,” Carlisle said. “I said the pay was good and that I really hoped I would never meet Bill Carlisle.”

The men all laughed, and this eased the tension. They spent the next few miles in conversation.

“I know Bill Carlisle, would know him anywhere,” the fireman suddenly said. “I was in the courtroom during his trial.”

Carlisle said he looked up quickly to see if he had been recognized but the fireman didn’t react, so he figured it was just idle talk. Just before daylight, they entered the Laramie yard and Carlisle said he jumped down from the engine and started across the tracks when the engineer called out to him.

[{"type":"text","text":"“So long, Bill,” the engineer said, “And good luck!”"}]

In Laramie, Carlisle was eating at a restaurant across from the police station. When he went to pay for his bill the waitress told him to keep his money because he would need it.

“I knew I was recognized,” Carlisle said.  “I told her, you take out what I owe. The government is still making money and when I need more, I will probably get it.”

Carlisle purchased a better gun, using the last of his money. He contemplated robbing a Laramie clothing store but discarded the idea quickly.

“As long as the railroad was looking for me, why should I bother a storekeeper in Laramie, or any other place,” Carlisle wrote. “Why not just go ahead and hold-up another train? I could be in no worse position than I was if I were to hold-up a dozen.”

years lay ahead of him regardless and because of his escape, he could not hope to receive further clemency. He decided to hold up a train once more before leaving Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Another Train Robbery"}]

Carlisle hopped on a freight train and rode it to the Ohio Oil Camp at Rock Creek. He was once more recognized, but the men were all friendly to him. Later, he was approached and warned that one of the five was planning to turn him in.

Carlisle said he calmly ate his dinner and told his confidant not to worry, that he would soon be long gone. Carlisle described then how he returned to the train yard as a train slowly moved through. He swung up between two coaches and rode for a mile before attempting to enter.

When he stepped inside the passenger car with a drawn gun, Carlisle was shocked. Most of the passengers soldiers and sailors on their way home from France.

“I felt that I would be very fortunate if I ever left this train without a fight,” Carlisle said.  "Some of these men had as much, if not more, nerve than I had. They had fought overseas and would not be as easy to handle as the passengers had been on my other hold-ups.”

It was too late to back out now so Carlisle shouted out to the men to put their hands up. The command was obeyed and Carlisle said he was scared for the first time during a robbery.

“Had I lost my nerve, I wondered,” Carlisle wrote. “It was no time for me to hesitate. This time I did my own collecting.”

He ordered a man to put coins in his cap and moved on to the next seat where two soldiers sat, their hands up and watching him curiously.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Just back from France?” I asked."}]

When the soldiers responded to the affirmative, Carlisle told them to keep their money.

“I would have been over there with you had they let me go,” Carlisle said.

He only robbed about six passengers — all men. He let alone all the soldiers, women and an old couple.

“All I wanted was enough money to buy an outfit of clothes that would allow me to dress so that I would not arouse suspicion when I reached Denver, where I had planned to go,” Carlisle said.

Word had spread through the train that he was robbing it. A young man appeared holding a gun and, not wanting to shoot anyone, much less a youth, Carlisle attempted to disarm him and ended up getting shot in the wrist.

“Wounded, with no thought of surrender, I stood formulating new plans,” Carlisle said. “I would have to take to the hills again until such time as it would be safe; or until I could get my hand taken care of, which might be weeks."

At Medicine Bow, Carlisle jumped off the train. A man leaned out of another car and started shooting at him and Carlisle threw himself down. As he rolled out of range, another man who had jumped out took aim and shot once but then he, too, had to run for cover from flying bullets.

“Every car door was belching forth fire,” Carlisle said. “Passengers and guards alike were shooting wildly into the night and anyone within range of their bullets could have been hit.”

Carlisle ran over ground he knew well and disappeared into the range, leaving behind a small trail of blood.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Into The Hills"}]

Carlisle spent the next two weeks on foot, walking from one ranch to another, his wounded hand giving him fits. Sometimes he was recognized, other times the families were unaware of who the fugitive was they were hosting.

Carlisle described how they kept track of the posse on the ranch telephone. As the posse passed a ranch, someone at that ranch would phone ahead that it was coming. They kept track of the posse until one day it reached Antelope Basin and failed to show up again.

The posse had given up the hunt for Carlisle and had gone antelope hunting.

None of the ranchers ever turned Carlisle in for the $1,200 reward and, as one rancher wife simply told Carlisle, “Why would we do that?”

In the end, Carlisle was cornered by law enforcement in an isolated cabin and, despite his hands being up, was blasted through the lungs by a rifle. Trying to surrender saved his life because after the shot, when he lowered his arms, the skin closed around the bullet hole.

Carlisle was roughly treated and not given proper medical care by the deputies until he reached a hospital in Laramie. The doctors were furious at the treatment, and this only built more public sympathy.

Carlisle was again a model prisoner and ended up serving 20 years. Thanks to the persistence of Rev. Gerard Schellinger, he was released in 1936 at the age of 45. Carlisle went on to marry and became a successful businessman with his Carlisle’s Cabins, Roundup Café and The Lone Bandit Trading Post in Laramie.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gillian remembers eating at the cafe as a child."}]

“I think the biggest thing about Bill Carlisle is how he changed his life so much,” hesaid. “Usually when someone gets on a bad road, they stay on the wrong there, but Carlisle wanted to do good and was just so well-liked.”

Frontier prison inset Allen Brown via Alamy 8 9 26

<title>Wyoming's 'Gentleman Bandit' Was National Sensation For Polite Train Robberies | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Newspapers dubbed Bill Carlisle the "Gentleman Bandit" after crime sprees in the early 1900s that earned him favor with Wyoming locals. “He was so good to the people that he was robbing," said an 82-year-old whose grandma was a friend of the bandit.

Wyoming's 'Gentleman Bandit' Was National Sensation For Polite Train Robberies

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Tourism

Will Grant still has the two horses, Chicken Fry and Badger, that he rode across Wyoming in the summer of 2019 when he retraced all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail. 

Chicken Fry was born in New Mexico, and no one knows for sure how old he is.

“He’s had some hard miles on him,” Grant said. “Not a hard life, but plenty of work. So we rope off them a little bit, but not too much, and they’re like trail horses.”

Some of those hard trail miles happened in a landscape that deeply respects its roots. Wyoming, Grant told Cowboy State Daily,  has cared for its Pony Express Trail better than other states.

“You can see it there,” Grant said. “It’s very well marked in Wyoming. Very well marked.”

Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are particularly bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

That’s left Grant wondering how Pony Express riders kept their feet and their hands warm, given that they were riding through South Pass in January of 1861.

“The winds through there are no joke,” he added.

These are just a few of the gritty details Grant learned about Wyoming as he rode through it on the back of a horse, surrounded by a vast, windswept sea of sagebrush. 

He had known from the outset that he would face the same brutal elements the pioneers did — shifting mud, relentless wind, desert conditions, mosquitoes, and the like.

But, as he wrote in his book, “The Last Ride of the Pony Express,” thinking about the hardships ahead of time and experiencing them firsthand are two very different things. 

That point became starkly clear under the flash of a sudden Wyoming summer storm. Grant and his two horses, he realized immediately, were the highest point on the landscape. They were walking targets clad in iron horseshoes. And there was nowhere for them to take cover. It was just miles of open sagebrush in every direction, as far as his eyes could see.

The crack of thunder overhead filled him with dread as he rode across the land in that gathering storm. He also gained a new appreciation for the 1860s couriers who wrote of learning to read the landscape in between blinding pulses of lightning strikes.

“I learned that the Pony Express as a mail service was a really impressive display of American entrepreneurship,” he said. “There’s no other country in the world that could have done the same thing given the same environmental parameters. There were no horses out there. There was no infrastructure on which to set up a fast horse mail relay over 2,000 miles to deliver a letter in 10 days.”

There were wild horses, and they were a huge danger to a lone rider managing two horses. Grant writes about that in his book, how careful he was to avoid either inciting an attack or losing his horses to that stallion’s wild harem.

The Mongols and the Romans and the Persians did have ancient horse relays to quickly traverse their kingdoms. But these were created in already civilized areas that their empires controlled, and those relays were fed and maintained by the full resources and might of those empires. 

America’s Pony Express was a business venture started completely from scratch, with no empire behind it at all, traversing a vast and empty land that was openly hostile. There were no resources from a surrounding empire to help them through all the places that lacked food, water and shelter. 

Pony Express riders didn’t wait for perfect conditions, though. They rode in all kinds of weather, making a 2,000-mile trip in a just 10 days. 

Grant took his time, compared to them. His journey lasted 142 nights.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Modern-Day Station Masters"}]

He also had something else the original 1860s riders didn’t. Wyoming ranchers — many of them descended from original homesteaders — who helped him all along the way, as did members of the modern-day Pony Express riders. The ranchers, in particular, were an informal network of modern-day station masters, ready and willing to help him all along the way.

Time and again, just as weather threatened to overwhelm him and his small string of horses, Grant would ride up on a private gate to find it already opened to him. The rancher before had let the next farm know he was on the way and to watch out for him.

These ranchers didn’t just grant him passage through their land. They would actively pull him out of a storm, offering secure pasture space and protection from the elements. There were often hot meals and a dry bunkhouse were included, as well as their stories.

“The traveling horseman still finds a lot of hospitality in Wyoming, I’ll tell you that,” Grant said. “People were good to me. Opening pasture gates, no worries. Really good people all along the way.”

There was the time a well-meaning rancher tried to talk him into taking an ornery mule with him … 

But warm hospitality and cheerful dinners and storytelling were more common. It was a powerful reminder that while the physical shelters of the 1860s may have crumbled, the human infrastructure of mutual aid remains intact across the Wyoming plains. It’s been actively kept alive behind the closed gates of modern cattle ranchers, many of whom are still living by the unwritten code of the West, handed down from one generation to the next.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Write What You Know"}]

Grant’s Pony Express ride wasn’t just a history fascination for him. He found in the ride a perfect intersection for the two halves of his life.

“I’m a journalist, and I mostly have been writing for magazines,” he said. “What I really wanted to do is write a book. The Pony Express emerged as a topic that I thought I could shed some light on because I worked as a horse trainer and a cowboy.”

Grant, born and raised in Littleton, Colorado, spent his summers cowboying on a ranch between Chugwater and LaGrange in Wyoming, studying under a foreman named Tim Sussex.

“Those were good years for me because Tim really showed me how to handle horses in a lot of different ways, but really how to be quiet with a horse,” he said. “That is the best thing you can do, get a ranch hand job on the wide open prairies of Wyoming.”

His first degree program was forestry and geology in Tennessee, after which he went back to horses, breaking colts in Larkspur, Colorado, then working for a ranch in Texas. 

In 2008, he went back to school to study journalism at University of Montana School of Journalism.

“I needed it,” he said. “I’d been training horses and doing ranch work for like eight years. I had to use a different part of my brain.”

When he went hunting for a book idea, the old writer’s advice — write what you know — stuck.

“I saw the Pony Express as a way to overlap my expertise with horses and write what you know,” he said. “I decided to dive into the Pony Express and I thought, ‘Well, obviously, I’m gonna have to just ride it. Travel it by horseback.’”

That, he added, was the “best summer of my life.” 

Even if it was the summer of 2019 — not the summer of ’69.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Trail Logic And Life"}]

Spending five months on the back of a horse gave him new perspectives on hardships and life. 

“When things are bad, you can expect they are going to get better,” he said. “If you have a bad camp, then the next night is almost certainly going to be better. And if you have two bad nights in a row, then your odds are even better that you’re headed for greener pastures.”

That simple trail logic helped him keep his morale intact through the inevitable stretches of cold and wet, hot and thirsty, tired and hungry all along the way.

He also learned more about his horses than he expected.

“I’ve been around horses my entire life,” he said. “But I learned a lot about their nonverbal communication. I learned you can tell a lot about a horse by listening to the way they walk.”

Any discomfort comes out in the sound of the hooves striking the ground.

He also noticed things about humans as well, including that they seem to care more about someone who is riding on the back of a horse than they do about someone who is on foot.

“They’re more likely to offer support because of the horses,” he said. “People cared about the wellbeing of the horses more than they cared about the wellbeing of me for sure. Having the animals with you opens up a lot of doors.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Next Book"}]

These days Grant lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Chicken Fry and Badger have the run of the place, and Grant spends more time “wrangling sentences” than he does cattle.

He’s already knee-deep in his next book, which is about the ancestry of the American cowboy.

The research has already taken him to Mexico, Spain, and soon Morocco. Next summer he’ll tackle history that’s “closer to home.”

Whether that brings him back to Wyoming remains to be seen. But Wyoming will have its thread in the book regardless.

“I’ve got a lot of good Wyoming material built up over the years,” he said. “Horsebacking it across Wyoming for the Pony Express gave me a pretty good look at the country.”

And being a wrangler near Chugwater was a whole other dimension of the state and its cowboys.

After riding the Pony Express across Wyoming and sleeping under its stars, Grant may have left tracks that already blew away. But the stories Wyoming whispered to him in the night still live on, indelible memories that explain the code of the West in ways words never could.

Will Grant 7 N8 A8831 8 9 26

<title>Cowboy Rides All 2,000 Miles Of Pony Express, Says Wyoming Weather Overwhelming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Cowboy and journalist Will Grant rode all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail on horseback. He said the trip gave him a newfound respect for Wyoming weather. Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

Cowboy Rides All 2,000 Miles Of Pony Express, Says Wyoming Weather Overwhelming

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

A GMC Yukon is smashed against giant boulders in a ravine off U.S. Highway 14-16-20 between Cody and Greybull. It’s been there for two years and could be there for many years longer.

, Suzanne Marie Cole drove the 7,000-pound SUV off the highway in what she claimed was a carjacking. She was arrested on two misdemeanor charges of probation violation, as it was determined she was intoxicated at the time of the accident.

Cole’s case has long since been resolved, but her Yukon is 

. Its windows and windshield are gone, anything of value inside is long gone, and it's riddled with bullet holes.

Pere Davison saw the Yukon while hiking in the Oregon Basin this past week.

“I hike up along that ridge all the time, but I have to go down and look over an edge to see the car,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “It is hard to believe it got down to where it stopped. It had to go over some pretty big boulders.”

The Yukon is likely to become one of dozens, possibly hundreds, of vehicles left abandoned in remote, hard-to-reach areas in Wyoming. It’s just not worth the effort to recover it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Fruitless Effort"}]

Zac Beardall of Zac's Towing and Recovery in Cody knows exactly where the Yukon is. After Cole’s accident, the Park County Sheriff’s Office contacted him about recovering it.

Beardall isn’t one to be intimidated by a challenging recovery. He knows he could recover the Yukon, but as a business owner practicality takes precedence.

“There's no reason for it other than it's basically a fruitless effort,” he said. “Trying to devote an entire day and an entire fleet of equipment to a non-paying job is not exactly the best business decision.”

In these incidents, the owner is usually responsible for recovery costs. According to Beardall, that wasn’t an option for Cole.

“The owner didn't really make that choice,” he said. “It's more that they had no other option because they didn’t have the money or insurance to cover the operation as it stands. It’s not like breaking down on 1000 Wyoming Street and getting towed for $100.”

Because the State of Wyoming doesn’t cover recovery expenses, Beardall would have to cover it himself. It wasn’t worth it then, and it’s even less so now.

“That Yukon will never be roadworthy again,” he said. “It launched off a cliff and bounced up three boulders. The very second it lost momentum at the bottom of that cliff, it was never going to be roadworthy again.”

Two years later, the Yukon is in ever worse condition. It’s full of holes, created by rust and dozens of bullets, indicating it’s been used for target practice more than once.

When Beardall’s on the hook for a difficult recovery, he can recoup some of the cost by scrapping the vehicle. Even then, recovering the Yukon wouldn’t be worth it.

“The recovery’s not worth the scrap value,” he said. “Even the best scrap value on it wasn't ever going to be worth the recovery effort.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Live And Let Live"}]

Given the Yukon’s location, it’s under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The agency might decide that recovering the vehicle is worth the expense.

But will it? Beardall thinks it’s unlikely, especially because it’s not doing any harm where it is.

“For the BLM, it falls under the same purview as trash and litter,” he said. “It's not hurting anything where it's at. It's not obstructing a roadway or hiking path, and it’s not causing some huge environmental friction. Nobody’s going to pay a huge amount of money to get a vehicle out when it’s not doing anything.”

That’s what Beardall described as something that’s “been the establishment” since the invention of motorized vehicles. Sometimes, they end up where they shouldn’t be and remain there.

“They're big chunks of steel that take a lot of effort to move,” he said. “Sometimes, they’re in an area where it’s not really worth trying to move them, so we leave them.”

That’s nothing new. Beardall knows of “about 50 different vehicles in the area” that ended up in similar predicaments and haven’t moved or been recovered since. Many of those are older than one might expect.

“I can take you out to places where there's Model A’s in canals,” he said. “They’ve been there since they went there, and nobody's moved them in the last 100 years.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Like, Share, Subscribe?"}]

Unless the BLM decides to pay Zac’s Towing and Recovery or some other company to get the Yukon out of the ravine, Beardall expects that it’ll stay where it is. It’s so far away from U.S. Highway 14-16-20 that it can’t even be seen from the road.

There was only one scenario where Beardall might find the Yukon worth the time, effort, and expense. That would require more social media savvy.

“I could be like some of the YouTube guys and publicize the effort to make money off it,” he said. “Maybe one day I'll have a YouTube channel set up, where we're getting paid for views recovering vehicles from canyons and sinkholes, but that’s the only way it would make any sense, financially.”

If that ever happens, Beardall doesn’t anticipate becoming a social media star anytime soon. Business is busy enough without the extra clout.

“At this time of year, especially, we're ‘all hands on deck’ trying to operate and pick up cars, motorists, and anybody else who might be stranded, broken down, or wrecked,” he said. “Taking a full day to recover that Yukon just isn’t worth it.”

SUV off cliff for 2 years 8 6 26

<title>SUV That Went Off Wyoming Cliff 2 Years Ago Still There With No Plans To Recover | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Two years ago, a GMC Yukon flew off a highway in Park County and bounced off giant boulders in Wyoming's Oregon Basin. It's still there and likely there to stay because recovering it would be a fruitless effort, said the owner of a local tow company.

SUV That Went Off Wyoming Cliff 2 Years Ago Still There With No Plans To Recover

CHEYENNE — “Potential” is the word T-Joe’s Steakhouse owner Sherrie Lyle thought of the first time she saw the quirky cluster of 1910-era buildings slowly but surely giving way to time and the elements on the city's distressed west side. 

“It’s just these historic, colorful buildings,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “A quirky space. I like it.”

The property was owned by someone else the first time Lyle noticed it, but after those plans fell through Lyle and her children Molly and Jason decided to place an $850,000 bet on the “Ful-O-Pep” grain elevator corner. They believe they can transform it into a cool new destination for Cheyenne.

“It will take a little work,” Lyle acknowledged. “But it won’t take very long.”

Lyle is no stranger to running successful businesses. Her T-Joe’s Steakhouse is a busy restaurant that’s been voted “best steak” a time or two in Laramie County. 

Lyle is confident in this project because she’s already lined up a bakery shop owner who wants to lease the red mini-Victorian home once it’s fixed up. 

She also already has a jewelry shop owner interested in the little green cottage and an antique dealer who wants to turn the carriage house — now just storage — into a shop.

The Blossom Yoga Studio and a neighboring dress shop will stay put and keep operating. Together they’re already covering a substantial portion of the mortgage payment, Lyle said.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Liquor-License Bust"}]

The only building with an undecided fate is the 1912 “Ful-O-Pep” grain elevator, which once anchored a redevelopment attempt called the Old Cheyenne Elevator. 

“They had a beautiful idea for a restaurant here,” Lyle said, referring to the former owners. “But they didn’t get the liquor license, so that’s why they sold the place.”

That earlier group, operating as Ful-O-Pep LLC, envisioned a private dining room inside the elevator with a bar out front and a drive-through food-truck court. But their concept required a coveted full retail liquor license. 

They were up against 11 competitors for a single available license, and they ultimately lost. 

Ful-O-Pep’s owners did look at alternative liquor licenses, including the more attainable bar and grill license. But that option mandates a permanent commercial kitchen as well as food sales that are at least 70% of total revenue. 

Retrofitting a 110-year-old elevator with a modern commercial kitchen would have been dramatically more expensive than their original plan, which relied on rotating food trucks instead, so the dream stalled. The property went back on the market, until Lyle stepped in.

The owner of T-Joe’s Steakhouse in Cheyenne just spent $850,000 on a cluster of 1910-era buildings that includes the old Ful-O-Pep grain elevator to resurrect the city’s west side. “It will take a little work, but it won’t take very long,” she said.

One More For The Road: Friday, September 22, 2023

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