Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Irwin didn’t own a stake in Seabiscuit and that, while local folklore has suggested the legendary racehorse was stabled in the barn at one point, there’s nothing in the historical record to confirm it.
If the walls of Cowboy State Daily’s headquarters in Cheyenne could talk, they’d tell a tale that’s part history and all legend.
That’s because the restored historic brick building was once a horse barn belonging to C.B. Irwin, Cheyenne’s larger-than-life Wild West character and owner of the second most famous Wild West Show after Buffalo Bill Cody’s.
Irwin owned a lot of famous horses during his time that starred in the Irwin Brothers’ Wild West Show, and also appeared for 11 years in Cheyenne Frontier Days, through 1912.
Irwin’s best-known horse become a Wild West and American legend. That’s the famed Steamboat, the “outlaw horse” few cowboys could ride and who became Wyoming’s famous “bucking horse” logo.
Local folklore has also long held that the famous racehorse Seabiscuit also had taken a turn in Irwin’s barn, built within sight of the Wyoming State Capitol in Cheyenne, according to Annaliese Wiederspahn, the present owner of the barn. While plausible because the barn was often used for short-term stabling of horses traveling through Wyoming via railroad, there is no documentation confirming that.
Just Passing Through
The time any famous horses would’ve spent in the barn was generally fleeting, Wiederspahn said.
The barn in Cheyenne’s city limits was meant as a temporary holding area for horses coming off the rail after a show, she told Cowboy State Daily. Irwin would then take them out to his 23,000-acre Y Bar 6 Ranch as soon as he got the chance.
“Charlie’s wife was not super keen on their big ranch out off of either what is now Horsetooth or Iron Mountain,” Wiederspahn said. “And at the time, getting in and out from the place to Cheyenne was a trick.”
So, Irwin compromised a little. He built his wife a house in town, where she felt her children would have better social opportunities. And, just a bit away from the house, he built himself a barn to hold his horses until he could get them to the ranch.
“What we know is that the barn was built before 1933, and so it is old, and it’s super interesting because it has a basement at a time when buildings didn’t have basements,” Wiederspahn said. “They poured a basement mainly because he had all this Wild West Show paraphernalia that was coming on and off the rail.”
The C.B. Irwin Barn before its restoration. (Courtesy Annaliese Wiederspahn) 
Front view of the C.B. Irwin Barn, which now houses the offices of Cowboy State Daily and a loft apartment above. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The back view of the C.B. Irwin Barn near the Wyoming State Capitol in Cheyenne retains a ghost image from when the barn was a neighborhood grocery store. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The finished C.B. Irwin Barn, which now houses the offices of Cowboy State Daily and a loft apartment above. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The front of the C.B. Irwin Barn has a brick commemorating its historic place as part of Cheyenne. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
When the weather's nice, the garage door opens up on the barn's modern conference room. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
An inlaid brick tells everyone this is the famous Irwin Barn. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily)
One Windstorm From Falling Over
At the time Wiederspahn’s family came to own the C.B. Irwin Barn, it had been sitting unused and derelict for 40 to 50 years.
The brick building had been well-made, and it had what architects call “good bones,” but the roof had caved in, and it was a windstorm away from falling down.
“It was a disaster,” Wiederspahn said.
It had grafitti on the walls and pieces of itself falling in everywhere one walked. In fact, one of the people she showed the barn to actually fell through the second story floor while she was showing it.
“It was just rotted out,” Wiederspahn said. “The roof was nonexistent, so tons of water were getting in. It was just a mess.”
Knocking it down might have been the “financially smart” thing to do, Wiederspahn said, given that the roof collapsing had caused the bricks to shift and the building itself was about to fall over.
But Wiederspahn couldn’t do that to the building her father, Alvin Wiederspahn, had bought.
“He bought it because he adored historic buildings,” Wiederspahn said. “He never saw an old building that he didn’t want to fix up. But he died before he got around to that one, and so I got to do it. And it was, for me, a cathartic and wonderful way to sit with his notes.”
Alvin Wiederspahn kept copious notes of what he planned for the building, as well as its history, Annaliese told Cowboy State Daily.
“That was just such a neat way to get inside his head a little bit, even after he was gone,” she said.
The first step was to put a steel skeleton inside the building, then a different roof.
“So, in those 50 years, we came pretty close to losing it,” Wiederspahn said. “It was so worth doing.”
Having Cowboy State Daily in the barn itself is something Wiederspahn said she’s particularly proud of.
“There’s something poetic about a barn built by a guy who created a community and brought people together,” she said. “And to have the little remnant of this place still bring people together in some fashion, I think that’s kind of the last thing I’m hoping to accomplish with it.”
C.B. Irwin Was Larger Than Life
Charles Burton Irwin’s beginnings were inauspicious. He was born in Missouri to a blacksmith father and a homemaker mother, but he become a larger-than-life character in more ways than one.
First, he was a tall man at 6 foot, 4 inches and, thanks to a thyroid problem, weighed close to 500 pounds toward the end of his life, leading rodeo photographer J.E. Stinson to refer to him as the “Giant Cowboy.”
His friends included many great men of the day, such as Presidents William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, Will Rogers, Sioux Chief Red Cloud, Gen. John J. Pershing — for whom he named some of his best horses.
He and his wife Etta Mae McGuckin had three children in all, a son named Floyd Leslie, and daughters Joella and Pauline. But they also fostered and adopted 17 children, making theirs an exceedingly large family.
The Irwins won many awards in the horse rodeo world. C.B. Irwin made World Champion Steer Roper in 1906, while his brother Frank Irwin won the men’s relay race and the wild horse race numerous times at Cheyenne Frontier Days.
The Irwin children brought acclaim to the family as well, with many awards of their own.
Margaret Irwin, for example, won the ladies’ relay race twice, and she was All-Around Cowgirl in 1902, 1903 and 1904 at Cheyenne Frontier Days, while brother Floyd Irwin was a champion trick roper and rider. Joella and Pauline Irwin each won the ladies’ championship twice, and their cousin, Gladys Irwin, was right behind them.
C.B. Irwin also had a habit of helping strays, and that’s likely how he became acquainted with Tom Smith, a horse trainer who would eventually go on to discover and train the famous racehorse Seabiscuit for Charles Howard.
Smith and Irwin were a great team and, during one year, Irwin would hold the record for winning 147 races — the best for a thoroughbred trainer at the time.
The morning news meeting at Cowboy State Daily inside the historic Irwin Barn (Jimmy Orr) 
A warm sitting area just as you walk into the Irwin Barn, with the main Cowboy State Daily newsroom behind. And yes, it's Christmass all year long at CSD. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The main newsroom for Cowboy State Daily reporters and editors based in Cheyenne. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
While the technology in the building is modern, there are some throwbacks to when the Remington Portable typewriter was the original "laptop." (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The exposed brick maintains the historic nature of the Irwin Barn. This is a hallway between the main newsroom and the conference room. It's highlighted by a large original print from Wyoming photographer Dave Bell. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
Right off the newsroom are a pair of sound-dampening cubbyholes dubbed the "phone booths" where reporters can go to conduct interviews or get a little more privacy than the open newsroom. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The back conference room features a beautiful slab table and a large screen to Zoom morning news budget meetings. The garage door can be opened when the weather's nice. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The back conference room features a beautiful slab table and a large screen to Zoom morning news budget meetings. The garage door can be opened when the weather's nice. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily)
They Meet
Irwin was also a man who dreamed big and, at times, lost big as well.
There were no in-betweens for C.B. Irwin.
Never content to remain a blacksmith, Irwin early on made it a mission to become a land baron someday, some way, somehow.
It was through his early efforts that Irwin first met the legendary rodeo horse Steamboat. He was working for John Coble’s Iron Mountain Ranch handling a string of bucking broncos that were to appear in both Cheyenne Frontier Days and the Festival of Mountain and Plain in Denver.
By 1903, Irwin would own Steamboat outright. Coble sold out of his ranch that year and, as a joke, gave Steamboat to the Cheyenne Elks Lodge.
The Elks soon realized that the horse was not the “goat” Coble had told them he was. He was a serious bucker and, as such, of no use to them.
Irwin took the horse of their hands instead, and would own him until Steamboat’s death in 1914, after the horse tangled with some unforgiving barbed wire and got blood poisoning.
Irwin took his legendary horse out in the larger-than-life style he was so well known for. He used Tom Horn’s rifle to put Steamboat out of his misery.
Contrary to myths that Steamboat was buried on the Cheyenne Frontier Days grounds, he was actually buried on the spot at the city dump, according to a Cheyenne Tribune interview with Paul R. Hansen, who was present when Steamboat was destroyed.
A Legend Is Born
Steamboat was born on the Frank Foss Ranch near Chugwater in 1896, and he was as wild and free as the wind until 1899, when the Swan Land and Cattle Co. bought the jet-black horse, along with several other horses, for its Two Bar Ranch.
It was on the Two Bar that Steamboat would get his famous name — as well as the injury that inspired it.
Cowboy Jimmy Danks, the first ever to ride the wily horse’s hurricane deck, told the story this way.
“When we throwed him to castrate him, we bumpted (sic) his head and told him (Two Bar Foreman) Sam Moore to look here,” Danks is recorded saying in the book “Steamboat: Legendary Bucking Horse,” by Candy Moulton. “There was a bone in his nostril. Sam cut it out with his pocketknife.”
The injury caused the horse to breathe so heavily when he was ridden that Danks took to calling the horse Steamboat. The young bucker was turned out for another year until he was 4. Then, it was time to break him, and that’s where Steamboat’s legend really begins.
Danks recalled that the horse was “kind of stubborn,” and that at first he just stood still after Danks got on to ride him.
“When you screwed him a little bit with the spurs, he would go to,” Danks said. “He would buck, and when he bucked, he bucked hard.”
One day, Danks decided to take Steamboat out of the corral and try him that way. It didn’t help.
“He looked that way and this way,” Danks said. “He blowed up at me, and we had one of the damndest saddle fights you ever saw.”
When he got on, the horse went to bucking — so hard, Danks couldn’t keep hold of the horn.
“He tore me loose from there, and I gave up the elbow,” Danks said. “He went around and around. He throwed me over there and this way and that, and I thought ‘Well, here I go.’”
The loft of the Irwin Barn has been made into a comfortable, modern — yet still rustic — space. (Courtesy Annaliese Wiederspahn) 
The loft of the Irwin Barn has been made into a comfortable, modern — yet still rustic — space. (Courtesy Annaliese Wiederspahn) 
The loft of the Irwin Barn has been made into a comfortable, modern — yet still rustic — space. (Courtesy Annaliese Wiederspahn) 
The loft of the Irwin Barn has been made into a comfortable, modern — yet still rustic — space. (Courtesy Annaliese Wiederspahn) 
The loft of the Irwin Barn has been made into a comfortable, modern — yet still rustic — space. (Courtesy Annaliese Wiederspahn) 
The loft of the Irwin Barn has been made into a comfortable, modern — yet still rustic — space. (Courtesy Annaliese Wiederspahn) 
The loft of the Irwin Barn has been made into a comfortable, modern — yet still rustic — space. (Courtesy Annaliese Wiederspahn) 
The loft of the Irwin Barn has been made into a comfortable, modern — yet still rustic — space. (Courtesy Annaliese Wiederspahn)
The Legend Grows
Ultimately, Danks kept his seat on the horse, according to the story he told, and didn’t land in the dirt. That makes him one of the few cowboys who could ever say that.
But as Steamboat grew older, he got craftier at the game of throwing off cowboys, and by the time 1907 and 1908 rolled around he’d earned the outlaw title Worst Bucking Horse in the World.
At first, the Two Bar Ranch cowboys kept quiet about their bucking horse. Maybe they hoped to make a little money betting on the horse during roundups, where cowboys tested their skills against one another.
But, when John Coble came looking for bucking broncos in 1901, Steamboat was quickly offered to him for a mere $25 to $50. By comparison, a good quality horse was worth more like $150 in those days, according to historical census data.
Steamboat ruled the arena of Cheyenne Frontier Days for 11 years through 1912, after which Irwin lost the contract for supplying stock to the event amid a fractious lawsuit.
From then until Steamboat’s death in 1914, the outlaw horse appeared in Irwin’s Wild West Show and other rodeo events that Irwin supplied across Wyoming and the West.
The Steamboat Style
Steamboat had his own unique style of bucking, throwing front feet one way and back legs another, all the while twisting in the air, only to land with board-stiff legs. The thundering stop was like taking a jackhammer to the backside. It jerked most cowboys loose, pitching them up into the air and back down to an unforgiving ground.
Of the 38 cowboys known to have ridden Steamboat, only a few managed to complete what was then considered the full ride.
In those days, there was no 8-second rule. There were no chutes either. Cowboys saddled the horse they’d drawn themselves in the middle of the arena. That way, there would be no one to blame but themselves if the rigging wasn’t right.
Then, they rode the horse until it either came to a complete standstill or successfully threw them off, down into the dust, the mud and, yes, sometimes, the blood.
Cowboys who relaxed on Steamboat to what they thought was a standstill often found that the horse was not done with them yet. He was just taking a breath for the next round.
The legendary horses that trailed through the C.B. Irwin Barn still inspire many Wyomingites to this day, and Steamboat is forever linked with the bucking bronco logo that appears on every state license plate.
In the quiet still of night, after everyone else has gone home, it’s not hard to imagine hearing the hooves of Steamboat clomping and pawing in the barn that now houses Cowboy State Daily. It’s not hard either to imagine the heavy breathing of the legendary rodeo bronc echoing through the barn.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
