Cheyenne Depot Museum (former UPRR)

The museum occupies Cheyenne's 1880s Union Pacific depot, once the railroad's largest station west of Council Bluffs, Iowa, and a major western example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture designed by Van Brunt & Howe. Union Pacific hired John F. Coots in 1886 to complete the building; the community celebrated the cornerstone's placement in mid-July 1886, stone came by train from the railroad's own quarry, and extra laborers pushed the job to a May 1887 finish. The depot was sited directly down the street from the Wyoming State Capitol, facing it as a statement of the railroad's importance to city and state. A 114-foot east addition by H.W. Baum followed in 1922 — built with matching stone from the reopened original quarry — and a 1929 renewal replaced structural wood with steel while Gilbert Stanley Underwood reworked the interior in Art Deco style. Amtrak's San Francisco Zephyr stopped calling directly in 1979, and Wyoming lost passenger rail entirely when the Pioneer was canceled in 1997. The museum was founded in 1993, organized as Cheyenne Depot Museum, Inc., a 501(c)3 created through an agreement between the Old West Museum and Cheyenne Frontier Days, with a 25-year lease on the city-owned National Historic Landmark; a $6.5 million city improvement from 2001 to 2006 added the events plaza out front.