Thursday in Laramie

Well, it was another bitterly cold day, so today’s outing was over to the Student Union building for the annual holiday bazaar. We saw all sorts of vendors, mostly people selling hand-crafted items. There were also a few vendors who specialize in selling products at places like farmer’s markets and bazaars. Jane found me a cowboy hat magnet that was just about my size and got me a souvenir from the Wild West. After that we stopped to buy some pasta from the woman that Pat and Jane buy from at the summer farmer’s market, and she wanted to meet me. She ended up getting her picture taken with me!

Later in the afternoon, we went down to the yarn shop where Jane works one evening a week and a Saturday a month to (partially) support her yarn habit. (Please note the word partially. Between you and me, I think she works there mostly so she get the first look at the new yarns when they come in!) On the way down, Jane pointed out a few of the local sights to me. We drove past the Ivinson Mansion, which houses the Laramie Plains Museum. It was owned by the Ivinson family first, and spent time as a girl’s boarding school, among other things, before its current incarnation as a museum for local history. It really is a beautiful building! When we stopped to get that picture we also took one of one of the local church steeples against a wintery grey sky.

Down town was our next stop. The down town shopping area is pretty small – First Street to Fourth Street, and three to five blocks long, more or less. Many of the buildings on First Street date from Laramie’s early days as a railroad town.  The railroad is the reason Laramie was founded; it began as a camp for men building the Union Pacific Railroad and was mostly big canvas tents on wooden platforms. It was a rough and ready frontier town at first, and vigilante justice was all too common. In 1886, the University was founded, and Laramie had something else to help it grow. First Street was still a bit wild all the way up until the 1950’s – it had a well used red light district and plenty of bars. Jane pointed out one of the buildings on First Street, showing me how it had lots of windows placed really close together on the second story – it used to be one of the local bordellos. Railroad workers, tie hacks (men who skillfully used axes to shape railroad ties – this was an actual job), workers from area coal mines and cowboys from the local ranches, as well as some of the University students, all frequented these rowdier parts of town.

Across the Laramie River (some river, it’s not much more than a trickle!) there is the old Territorial Prison. Jane said she’d take me to get some photos of it next week. Before Wyoming was a state, back when it was still a territory, they put the prison here, and somehow the building survived all those years. It was truly the Big House Across the River. For the last few years before it was restored, it was a barn for the University stock farm. About 20 years ago, it was restored and is now open to the public. It once held Butch Cassidy! Imagine that!

I am discovering that Laramie itself is a pretty small place. It only has about 25,000 people, but then the state of Wyoming only has half a million. Lots of wide open spaces here!

At the yarn shop (it’s on Ivinson Avenue – Ivinson Mansion, Ivinson Building on campus, Ivinson Avenue -are you starting to see a pattern here?), I decided to sit down and add a few rounds onto the sock Jane is currently knitting while Jane did an inventory of knitting needles and helped customers. There was an inticing scent of chocolate in the air and it turns out the the adjoining shop is a chocolate and candy store! Jane says she rarely notices that wonderful aroma anymore, but it was driving me crazy!

Finally, we headed back for the house, where we were greeted by happy Labrador retrievers and noisy birds and a tasty pasta dinner.

At the bazaar

A new friend

 

Ivinson Mansion

St. Matthew’s Cathedral against a winter evening sky

Sittin’ and knittin’

 -Priscilla