Forget the movie sets. Sheridan, Wyoming’s Old West is the real, unedited version

It’s been this way since 1910

Sheridan, Wyoming, sits right at the base of the Bighorn Mountains, and its downtown looks like someone stopped the clock more than a century ago.

The brick and stone buildings lining Main Street went up between 1910 and 1920, replacing the old wood-frame storefronts that came before.

The whole district landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and you can cover it on foot in an afternoon. But the deeper you look, the more this town pulls you in.

Sketched on wrapping paper in 1882

The town exists because a man named John D. Loucks drew up a plan for it on a piece of wrapping paper in 1882. Two years later, Sheridan was officially incorporated.

Cattle routes brought the first wave of people, and when the railroad arrived, Main Street started growing northward.

What began as a rough sketch turned into a real Western town, and the bones of that original layout are still right under your feet when you walk downtown today.

The finest hotel between Chicago and San Francisco

The Sheridan Inn opened in 1893, and people called it the finest hotel between Chicago and San Francisco. It had 64 guest rooms, the first bathtubs in the region, and the first electric lights.

The oak and mahogany bar came all the way from England. Ernest Hemingway stayed here.

So did Will Rogers and President Hoover.

The place earned National Historic Landmark status in 1964, and you can still walk through the same front doors they did.

Buffalo Bill auditioned acts from the front porch

Buffalo Bill Cody ran the Sheridan Inn from 1894 to 1896, using it as his base in northern Wyoming. He auditioned performers for his Wild West Show right from the front porch while acts tried out on the lawn below.

Picture that for a second. Today the restored Inn has 22 guest rooms and welcomes you in to explore its history.

You can stand on that same porch and look out at the street Cody watched over 130 years ago.

Hand-tooled saddles and a museum behind the shop

King’s Saddlery opened on Main Street in 1963, and founder Don King became world-famous for his ropes and hand-tooled leather. His signature “Sheridan style” of tooling is known across the country.

Walk through the shop and you’ll find the Don King Museum tucked in behind it, entered by donation. The collection fills the space with saddles, wagons, guns, artwork, and Western memorabilia.

You could spend an hour in there and still miss something on the shelves.

Wyoming’s oldest theater almost didn’t survive

The WYO Theater opened in 1923 as a vaudeville house called the Lotus. In 1929, it ran the first “talkie” in Wyoming, the first movie with sound in the state.

Then in 1982, it closed and nearly got torn down. The community stepped in, raised the money, and reopened it as a performing arts center in 1989.

It is the oldest operating theater in Wyoming, and you can catch a live show in the same room where audiences first heard voices come off a movie screen.

A neon cowboy has lit up Main Street since 1938

One sign stops more people on Main Street than anything else. The glowing neon bucking horse and cowboy at the Mint has been lighting up the block since 1938.

The building behind it dates back to 1907, and the sign has been voted one of the top cowboy neon signs in the country. You’ll see people standing beneath it with their phones out at every hour.

It is as much a part of downtown Sheridan as the brick buildings around it.

Free sculptures line the sidewalks downtown

The Sheridan Sculpture Walk puts rotating public art right on the downtown sidewalks, and it costs you nothing to see it. You can download a map ahead of time to find each piece, or just stumble across them as you walk.

Public art projects have turned corners and storefronts into small displays that mix with the century-old architecture around them. It adds a layer to the walk you don’t expect, and every year the pieces change.

Century-old storefronts still run local businesses

The shops and galleries downtown sit inside buildings that are more than 100 years old, and almost all of them are locally owned.

You’ll find Western wear, Wyoming-made goods, handmade crafts, and local outfitters who can arrange guided tours of the area’s history. No chain stores dominate the view.

The storefronts look the way they did a century ago, and the people inside them know the town like the back of their hand.

A Texas cowboy built a 30-room mansion here

Just north of downtown stands Trail End, the 13,748-square-foot mansion that John B. Kendrick built between 1908 and 1913. Kendrick started as a Texas cowboy and ended up as Wyoming’s governor and a U.S. senator.

He built his home in the rare Flemish Revival style, one of the few examples of it in the entire western United States. The house has more than 30 rooms, and you can see it from the road before you even pull in.

An elevator and indoor plumbing before anyone else had them

Trail End is now a state historic site open for tours, and the inside matches the outside. Rooms hold original furnishings and family belongings from the period between 1913 and 1933.

The home had an elevator and indoor plumbing when those were cutting-edge luxuries. Nearly four acres of grounds surround the house, with gardens and a carriage house still intact.

You walk through and get a real sense of how one powerful family lived in early Wyoming.

The Bighorns watch over every block you walk

Sheridan fills a full day easily, but you could stretch it into a long weekend and still find more. The Bighorn Mountains sit right behind the town the entire time, framing every block you walk.

Locals here are friendly in that straightforward Western way, the kind who wave from across the street.

Few places in the country let you step into the real Old West this completely, and even fewer put the mountains that close while you do it.

Explore historic downtown Sheridan in Wyoming

You can walk the whole historic district for free, centered on Main Street between Burkitt and Mandel Streets at the base of the Bighorn Mountains.

The Sheridan Inn, WYO Theater, and King’s Saddlery are all within easy reach of each other.

Give yourself at least a half day to cover the main landmarks, or a full day if you want to browse the shops and visit Trail End. Check the official website for current hours and seasonal event schedules before you go.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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