Education

The cold days of winter sparked some bright lights of creativity! In December, we welcomed Daphne Potter as our Art Uncork’d instructor. She led the attendees in creating beautiful winter paintings on canvas bags. The peaceful pine trees with a dash of sparkle made a perfect holiday scene. February was a good month to learn needle felting with Melissa Cullen and we made adorable Valentine gnomes. They had such amazing personalities! On April 20th we are looking forward to a night of pastels with Diane Edwards instructing.

Mark your calendars! Our Cowkids Camp will take place June 12-16, 2023. This is such a fun week for your kids or grandkids! We’ll learn about ranch and rodeo life and how the two intersect. Roping, animals, and wagon rides are bound to engage those elementary aged children! Registration will begin soon. On June 17th we will be enjoying another great Historic Ranch Tour out at the Dereemer Ranch. This popular event is available only to members. We hope you can join us!

The construction of the B Side Stands into their modern design in 1971. You can see the frame of the former stands underneath the new construction.

For decades, the B-Stand has been one of the most recognizable features of CFD’s outdoor arena. I have enjoyed being in the stands to see concerts, the Independence Day fireworks, the Professional Bull Riders show, and, of course, our famous rodeo. I have also had the far less enjoyable experience of being a member of a cleanup crew after concerts during the 1980s. I prefer, by far, being in the audience than part of that detail. Every year I spend a great deal of time under the B-stand with the many vendors, perusing their booths and bumping elbows with people from across the nation.

On one of these excursions several years ago, I became perplexed by a puzzling observation. Here was this modern stand with a gigantic flat roof, aluminum seats, and concrete everywhere; yet in the lower regions of the stand was a forest of angle iron supports held together by rivets. Nowhere is this more evident than below, where the vendors ply their wares. This observation wouldn’t jar anyone who has been involved with Cheyenne Frontier Days™ before 1971. The explanation, for them, is obvious. CFD’s original steel grandstands from 1908 are still there.

It is hard to believe that any portion of B-Stand could be that old, but it is true. Lying in the southernmost front corner are the original grandstands