Devastating Fire May Not Be End For Historic 134-Year-Old Cheyenne Pumphouse

CHEYENNE — A late-night weekend fire that gutted Cheyenne’s Historic Pumphouse may not be the end for the dilapidated 134-year-old building that, as recent as six months ago, was targeted for demolition.

One of the oldest buildings in Cheyenne, tracing its history to the founding of the city, the pumphouse has been vacant for decades and a magnet for vandals and vagrants.

It’s also one of the sturdiest historic buildings in the city, constructed of red Ashlar-cut sandstone and brick that Mayor Patrick Collins said he hopes saved it from being a total loss to the fire.

“The walls look like they are solid. I’m not an expert, but you know, I got there and the walls looked good,” he said, adding that city architects also think the guts of the pumphouse are strong.

Although the roof, made from old timbers and wood, is a total loss, plans to restore the Historic Pumphouse called for replacing the roof anyway, Collins said.

Besides, the mayor added, he and the rest of the Cheyenne City Council don’t want to have the pumphouse finally die on their watch.

“We’ve really tried hard not to be the council to tear it down,” Collins said. “And you know, having a fire like that really brings to our minds how precious some of these older buildings are and what we’ve got to do to try to save them.

“We’re looking forward to making that effort.”

That effort could take an estimated $4 million to revive the pumphouse, which hasn’t yet been pledged. Up until December, the city had a January deadline to either sell or lease the pumphouse or it would be torn down.

That was ultimately stayed as historic preservation groups work with the city to restore and find a new use for the facility.

Collins told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that the city wants to turn the pumphouse into the headquarters of its Clean and Safe Program, which takes care of the city’s historic downtown district.

“They have a whole bunch of different kinds of equipment, like snowplows and, you know, cleaners and all that stuff, which is now spread out all over the place,” he said. “We were looking for a place to bring all that equipment together.”

Investigation Ongoing

Those plans now depend on the continuing investigation into the fire, including an assessment of just how much damage was caused to the building’s stone structure, Collins said.

That will hopefully happen by the end of the week, said Cheyenne Fire Rescue Chief Andrew Dykshorn.

So far, nobody has set foot inside the pumphouse because it hasn’t yet been determined to be safe, he said. Drones have been used to scout inside the building.

“We still have not sent anybody inside, and we won’t,” he said. “We won’t send in any humans.”

As for how the fire might have started and where, that’s part of the ongoing investigation, the fire chief said.

“We have to rule out a lot of different causes, and we try not to speculate ahead of time,” he said. “There are so many different causes (to consider); our investigators work to rule things out.

“We’re hoping to have that done this week.”

But Collins said he and city staff are optimistic that the fire hasn’t derailed efforts to save the pumphouse.

“Our first glance when our architect went by, they thought that the roof was a loss but that the walls were still structurally sound and that we'd still be able to do our renovation project as we planned,” Collins said. “But we just don't know that yet.”

First, the building has to be cleared to go inside, and if it’s not safe, it must be made safe, he said.

“We hope that over the next few weeks we’ll figure out how to stabilize the building enough that we can get structural teams in there and get it going,” the mayor said. “I do know, though, that we’re going to have to figure out a way to get a roof on it before the winter.”

‘Gut Punch’

Cheyenne firefighters were at the scene within minutes of the 9:29 p.m. Saturday call that reported the pumphouse was burning, and it wasn’t too long before Collins got a call to tell him about the fire.

“It was really a gut punch,” he said of how the news hit him. “We’ve tried for a couple of decades now to (figure out) what we’re going to do with this building.”

That’s how Maren Kallas said she felt Saturday night when she showed up and watched as firefighters worked to knock down the flames.

“It was devastating, it was gut-wrenching,” said Kallas, vice president for Historic Cheyenne Inc. who has spent years researching the pumphouse and working to save it. “It was like witnessing a death, for sure.”

Like Collins, she also is hopeful that the building’s stone construction hasn’t been compromised.

“The saving grace is that it’s very well-built,” she told Cowboy State Daily on Sunday morning, adding that because of its stone structure, the roof and rafters were mostly what burned. 

Those had already been targeted for replacement for whenever a renovation effort could happen, Kallas said.

“It’s connected to Cheyenne’s origin story, so to lose it would be a profound cultural loss,” she said. “It was 122 years ago almost to the day that the largest flash flood in Cheyenne’s history happened in 1904 and the pumphouse was completely flooded.

“Now a big fire in 2026, and it’s still standing somehow, so it’s not a lost cause.”

‘Shame On Them’

As disappointing as the fire itself has been the reaction of some who claim that it’s more than a coincidence that the city had been considered at one point tearing the pumphouse down, and then it burned, Collins said.

“Oh my God, isn’t that a shame?” he said of those rumors. “Shame on them for saying that. I’m disappointed. That people would say that is really a gut punch for all of us.”

He said the city has spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on drawing up plans for renovating the building “and (to) bring it back to life.”

The idea that there was some type of city conspiracy to burn down the pumphouse is “ridiculous,” said Kallas.

“This is not a conspiracy, it’s just a tragedy,” she told Cowboy State Daily from near the site of the pumphouse fire.

Dykshorn told Cowboy State Daily from the scene of the fire Sunday morning that he also was aware of the conspiracy-theory-type comments, but that he’s so far seen no evidence that the fire was started by arson. 

He also said it’s way too early to speculate or put forward theories about how it happened.

Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.