The Rodeo Hall of Fame Is the Smallest Piece of What's Coming off I-25

On his first trip to Colorado Springs to plan the move of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association's bronze sculptures, Harvey Deselms learned that a moving truck would not be enough. The largest sculpture out front, which he calls "The Champ," will need a crane. It has inscribed marble around its base, and every outdoor bronze has to come off its pedestal before the trip north. "It's going to be a lot of manual labor," Deselms told Cowboy State Daily.

He and Carey Hosterman plan to bring the bronzes to Hosterman's facility in Cheyenne for repairs and new patinas. After that, they will be reinstalled at the PRCA's new home in the Hitching Post business district. The Champ shows Casey Tibbs riding the bronc Necktie. In his biography, sculptor Edd Hayes describes it as a 30-foot bronze-and-granite monument he made for the Hall of Fame. The ProRodeo Hall of Fame lists Tibbs as a Cheyenne Frontier Days all-around champion in 1953 and saddle bronc champion in 1948 and 1953. The biggest piece in the collection is coming back to a town where its subject won.

Most of the news coverage has focused on the museum. For anyone who lives in Laramie County, the bigger story is the land around it, because most of that land has no plan yet.

Thirty-Five Acres Inside a Much Larger Map

The PRCA headquarters, the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and the Museum of the American Cowboy are planned for a campus of about 35 acres. The district around them is far larger. On Oct. 12, the Cheyenne City Council unanimously annexed 652.67 acres at the southwest corner of the Interstate 25 and Interstate 80 interchange, south of Otto Road. Cap City News reported that the annexed land joins a parcel already inside city limits to form a single 780-acre development. Cheyenne LEADS CEO Betsey Hale uses a different number. She told Wyoming News Now the district totals 415 acres, leaving "another 380 acres that we've got to figure out what to do with."

Under either count, the rodeo campus is a small share of the total. Cap City News reported that the larger parcel has been used for about 100 years as winter grazing for sheep. The current Colorado Springs site, home to the Hall since 1979, is about half the acreage of the planned Cheyenne facility.

The landowner has proposed one limit on the rest of the land. The district is zoned Business Park, the same designation used for the data center projects east and northwest of town. Original owner Doug Samuelson told a city committee that he and his lawyer were drafting a revert clause ahead of the sale. As he described it, the clause would return the property to him if anyone developed data centers, firecracker stands, wind farms or solar there. "I wanted to have one nice place in this town where you come in and it'll be something we're proud of," Samuelson said, as reported by Cap City News. Mayor Patrick Collins said much the same in September. "It is designed to be an entertainment area," he told the council, according to Cap City News.

Where You Will Notice It First

The district's front door is a 29.48-acre parcel reached from West College Drive near McDonald's, and the PRCA facility will sit in the southeast corner of the larger tract. Project engineer Brad Emmons told the council that the diverging diamond interchange bridge on College Drive was built with room for two more lanes and will need widening at some point. WYDOT is reviewing a traffic study to decide when.

The city has approved the road design. Hale said road work could start as early as this year. An initial haul road would give crews access, and gravel can go down over the winter before asphalt in spring. Here is how the schedule stands now:

The building money is a $30 million package: $15 million approved by the state, matched by $15 million from Cheyenne LEADS. MOA Architects of Casper is handling the design, and Cowboy State Daily reports that nearly 40 consultants are working on the project. In the same report, Collins called the schedule "an aggressive timeline," with site plans, drainage, building designs and permits all still ahead. Expect the 2029 date to slip a little either way.

What Is Coming North

The collection includes much more than the bronzes. The museum in Colorado Springs is organized into Founders Hall, the Hall of Champions, Heritage Hall, the NFR Gallery, a Sculpture Garden and a rodeo livestock exhibit. Heritage Hall displays saddles, chaps, ropes, boots and clothing from rodeo history. The Hall of Champions honors stock contractors, clowns, announcers, committees and animals as well as contestants. Since opening in 1979, the Hall has inducted 325 people, 43 animals and 37 rodeo committees.

Many of those names already have ties to Laramie County. Cheyenne Frontier Days was inducted in 2008. C.B. Irwin, part of the first class in 1979, ran his rodeo operation from the N Bar V ranch in Horse Creek and won steer roping at Frontier Days. Chris LeDoux, inducted in 2005, won the Wyoming high school bareback title and wrote an early song while in high school in Cheyenne.

You don't have to wait until 2029 to see the collection. The museum's visitor page lists winter hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Monday. It is closed Tuesdays, and last admission is 4:30 p.m. Adult admission is $12, and children five and under get in free. Check that page before you make the drive south, because no closing date for the Colorado Springs site has been announced.

Built to Send Visitors Down the Road

The state's tourism leaders see the Cheyenne campus as a starting point for visitors, not a destination where they stay put. At the Wyoming Hospitality and Travel Coalition's fall summit in Sheridan on Oct. 22, the Wyoming Tourism Office projected $252.6 million in cumulative economic impact over the facility's first 10 years. Construction is not counted in that figure. The projection also includes 368 direct net jobs, 140 of them at the PRCA facility.

The baseline is Frontier Days, which brings about 175,000 visitors each July. Those visitors stay an average of 2.2 days, and summit speakers said the Hall of Fame would give them a reason to stay longer and to visit in other seasons. Visit Cheyenne CEO Jim Walter compared Cheyenne to Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. "The economic impact doesn't have to stop at the Laramie County line," he said, according to Cap City News. "In fact, if it does, we fail."

Closer to home, the idea is to link the new district with places Cheyenne already has. The site is about 2.8 miles from downtown. Hale told Wyoming News Now she expects "great connectivity with our downtown museums, with the Old West Museum out at Frontier Park." The Old West Museum and Frontier Days stay where they are at Frontier Park.

The Part of the Map Still Open

What goes on the acres beyond the campus is undecided. Hale has floated an indoor arena for equestrian and livestock events, a convention hotel, and a "Mare Motel" where travelers could board their horses while they explore. For now, those are ideas, not commitments.

The project's official Hitching Post District page calls the district "still a blank canvas" and asks for public input in a few ways:

• What Belongs Here? A short survey about what would make the district worth visiting again and again.
• What Should It Feel Like? A set of photos for rating the district's character.
• Campfire Conversation. Sign up to host one and receive a Meeting-in-a-Box with project information, discussion guides, activities and s'mores supplies for your friends, coworkers or community group.

The page reports that a Sept. 1 engagement day reached about 60 people at three locations. No new event date has been posted. A Campfire Conversation kit is the easiest way for a neighborhood group, a club or an office to get its ideas in while the plans for the remaining acres are still being drawn.

Questions about how the Hitching Post District could change the west side of Cheyenne are welcome at 307 Realty Professionals. Our team watches projects like this one from groundbreaking to grand opening, and we're glad to talk through what's planned near you or to put together a free home valuation if you'd like to know where your property stands today.