From strange to star-studded, Frontier Nights has a wacky and wonderful history

This doesn’t include the long line of legends like Merle Haggard, Charlie Daniels Band, George Strait, Reba McEntire, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Alabama, Buck Owens, Emmy Lou Harris, and many, many more that came before them.

It wasn’t always this way, though.

“(They weren’t) holding it on Frontier Park until 1929,” CFD Old West Museum associate director and curator Mike Kassel said. Following noise complaints, the event was officially moved to Frontier Park. “It used to be down in the downtown areas, where we had all the bands in the street. They would put sailcloth on the street to keep people’s shoes clean, put up bleachers, so you could watch each other while they danced.”

Aside from his role at the Old West Museum, Kassel is a local historian and adjunct instructor of history at Laramie County Community College. He’s written several books covering Cheyenne and greater Wyoming history, with a particular expertise in the state’s military and aviation history.

On Tuesday, Kassel sat with the Wyoming Tribune Eagle at a conference room table in the Old West Museum, going over a packet containing a list of every CFD performer since 1915.

Different national and world events show significant shifts in the lineups, with the earliest iterations featuring dance acts like the famous Sally Rand, Zorella the Fan Dancer and Flo Ash, who performed a striptease. Other acts pre-1950 were “The Hawaiian Show with Genuine Native Singers and Dancers,” an unidentified act titled “Battle of Argonne” (a pivotal battle of the Great War that remains the highest American death toll in history, including the Civil War), the Royal Swedish Bell Ringers and a performer listed as “Dove Lady.”

“Then, you started getting the bigger bands and the big jazz orchestras in the 1930s,” Kassel said. “And then, of course, after World War II, the big bands were still huge, with the Glenn Miller Band and Lawrence Welk.”

CFD used to feature a gambling hall prior to the Great Depression, where attendees could gamble using tickets for things like carnival offerings. The Depression put a stop to the more extravagant entertainment, leading organizers to employ much cheaper musical performances and variety acts.

WWII threw another wrench in the machine as competing cowboys were drafted to serve in the military. The rodeo continued on, cited as a source of national pride during wartime, during which there were no night show performances. However, when they returned, the featured acts were more nationally known.

It wasn’t until 1953 that Hank Thompson became the first country singer to perform at CFD, and it would be another 12 years before the first rock band, The Astronauts, from Boulder, Colorado, would perform on the main stage.

The most dramatic change occurred in the late 1960s, though the root of the cause can only be speculated. It was a time when the televised Grand Ole Opry had grown in popularity, Red Rocks Amphitheater had begun hosting major rock acts like The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, and the first modern music festivals were held in the Monterey International Pop Art Festival and Woodstock.

Whatever the cause, the 1972 Cheyenne Frontier Days featured an all-star lineup of Buck Owens & the Buckaroos, Roger Miller, Roy Clark, Susan Rate, Jody Miller and Pete Fountain, a popular jazz artist. This was also the year that the Frontier Arena B-stands were completed, allowing for more seating.

“I’d say that 1972 is kind of around that time period where people today would recognize a night show,” Kassel said. “Where you’d have recognized names, you’d have headliners, you’d have adequate lighting in the arena, so you can see everything.

“It (was) definitely an up-and-coming thing where people were willing to travel hundreds of miles to take part in a lot of this stuff. I think that the ‘60s definitely changed it.”

From there, the night shows promised to feature nothing less than the biggest names in country music, though the invitation of Night Ranger in 1985 introduced the first popular rock band of its kind to play Frontier Park Arena. Later, CFD would bring in acts like Journey, ZZ Top, Kiss and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Frontier Nights is now bigger than ever and will continue to grow, Kassel points out. Which poses the question of what’s more essential to Cheyenne Frontier Days — the rodeo or the night shows?

Volunteers and committee members will likely admit that the night shows are far and away the biggest source of revenue for the operation. The truth lies in the ticket prices; with a rodeo ticket priced at $40 and the nightly concerts often climbing to $100 and still selling out, there’s a clear winner as to what attraction hauls in the most money.

They were deemed important enough that the organizers were forced to adjust the rodeo schedule and more to accommodate the increasing size of the lineup. It’s also one of the primary reasons that the beloved chuckwagon races were discontinued from the night show.

“There began to be a very pragmatic reason why, unfortunately, the chuckwagon races were no longer necessary, or they were becoming a problem because the night show is becoming so dominant,” Kassel said. “They got moved, and the preparations for the night show moved up. Then, they moved the rodeo to be an earlier time slot so that the guys would have more time to set up the night shows.

“Because they moved the night show preparation earlier, and moved the rodeo, they had to move the parades earlier. They’ve got a good zone for it now, but they actually had to make some shifts of how the entire celebration goes for timing, just to accommodate the night shows.”

There’s always been the consideration as to whether CFD will even feature a rodeo in the distant future, be it due to souring public opinion of the competition as a whole, or if sales and competitors eventually dwindle to the point it’s no longer viable.

Frontier Nights will continue getting bigger and bigger, and there’s no denying the fact that it’s the main attractor for many of Cheyenne’s visitors during the busiest week of the year. Rest assured, if the rodeo format were ever to fold, CFD would be the last one to do so.

However, it’s unlikely that the world’s flagship rodeo would ever die off, even when faced with an institutional apocalypse.

“That’s kind of a hard thing for a lot of people to fathom,” Kassel said. “I think that if rodeo was eventually going to evaporate and go away, Cheyenne Frontier Days would be one of the last to stay because of its reputation.

“I make the analogy that as far as the significance of this rodeo, it’s on par with Wimbledon for tennis, or St. Andrews for golf or the Indianapolis 500 for auto racing. It would be hard to assume that if this is such a significant, important part of an entire sport that that would be the first or second one to go.”