Town Pulls Plug on Neon Cowgirl to Rope in Tourists

CHEYENNE, Wyo. —  A 40-foot-tall neon cowgirl has ridden into the sunset along a long trail of ideas for luring tourists downtown.

Townspeople are relieved the menace has passed. In a blizzard of letters to the local newspaper, “tacky” and “cheesy” had been among the more cordial adjectives for the mysterious stranger before she ever got to town.

The raven-haired beauty with a coil of rope over her shoulder was the work of a consultant hired to drum up ideas for a historic Union Pacific depot.

Towering above a proposed Old West-style visitor center next to the stately stone depot, her job would have been to lure business off nearby Interstate 80. On Thursday, the depot’s managers said they wanted no part of her.

“This is a public building,” said Darren Rudloff, spokesman for the Depot Coalition. “And the public . . . doesn’t think this is an appropriate symbol for this project and Cheyenne.”

Cheyenne resident Lynn Hay had this reaction to the news: “Oh, hallelujah. I was raised in the feminist era. I have a problem with objectifying women.”

The depot was one of the largest and most ornate along the Transcontinental Railroad during the 19th century. The building and Wyoming’s statehouse bookend the nine blocks of Capitol Avenue.

Although the cowgirl is no longer being considered, an $8.6-million proposal to liven up the depot with Wild West shows, a restaurant and stagecoach rides remains alive.

“The project itself is a darn good project, and I think it needs to be seriously looked at,” Mayor Leo Pando said. As for the cowgirl, “It was not what we wanted here, that’s for sure.”

The depot has long been in financial limbo. A few years ago, the businesses that make up the Depot Coalition received $2.5 million from the state to restore the building and open a transportation museum.

Now the group is running out of funds to so much as pay the utilities bill, according to Pando.

“If something doesn’t happen now, what eventually is going to happen is . . . the depot is going to revert back to the city or the state and it’s going to be a dilapidated old building that will sit there forever,” he said.

That is how the Depot Coalition came to hire Omaha, Neb., consultant J. Greg Smith to think up ways to capitalize on Cheyenne’s Western persona.

Plans for the Old Cheyenne project were unveiled April 28. Smith said he is confident the project will turn around the depot and the city’s economy, which lags the 355 days of the year Cheyenne Frontier Days is not drawing crowds.

“The one thing we do believe is the image of boarded-up windows in downtown Cheyenne is an image that has to change, and change rapidly,” he said. “That presents a very negative image to the people who come to Cheyenne and are excited about all they have heard about Cheyenne.”

He was not discouraged that his cowgirl was run out of town.

“This is all in the development stage. . . . Our proposal is to get as many people off the interstate as possible,” he said.