CFD carriage collection remains the largest in the country

CHEYENNE — The Cheyenne Frontier Days parade carriages aren’t the only things worth preserving in the Cheyenne Carriage Collection — it’s more than that. It’s about maintaining the largest and most unique carriage collection in the entire country.

The many horse-drawn carriages seen in the CFD parades are relics that are kept up meticulously.

By now, most parade vehicles have left the CFD Old West Museum and are waiting their turn in the Marietta Dinneen Barn to be rolled out. This barn was dedicated to Dinneen in 2022 during the 126th Cheyenne Frontier Days. The barn was made possible largely due to a donation from the Hughes Charitable Foundation.

The rich history doesn’t stop there, though.

“How we found them all and where they came from is a moving target,” said Mike Kassel, Wyoming historian and associate director and curator of collections at the CFD Old West Museum. “When we first started getting donations, many of them were dropped off with no context or background, so we didn’t know much about some of the carriages to start.”

One of the carriages in the collection even dates back to before Cheyenne was founded in 1867.

In total, they have around 150 carriages that came from all over the world. However, they only wheel out about half of them. This year specifically, around 60 to 65 will be shown.

Whether that’s because they’re too precious and fragile to be ridden, have too many miles on them or are in need of restoration, they keep those wagons in the Marietta Dinneen Barn. While the CFD Old West Museum holds its annual art show and sale in the main carriage section of the museum during the “Daddy of ‘em All,” the barn keeps them under protection and in good condition.

Parade’s evolution

Kassel explained how a lot of the carriages came anywhere from the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains to all the way from New York City.

“That one was kind of sent to us as a joke. There was a sale going on in Central Park, and they thought, ‘Hey, you know what this would be perfect for? Cheyenne Frontier Days.’”

The history of CFD parades wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging Fred and Margaret Boyce, the husband-and-wife duo that made the parades what they are today.

“Back in 1922, the first parades chairman was Fred Boyce. He thought that the old CFD parades were starting to look dated,” said Kassel. “So his wife, Margaret Boyce, encouraged him to shake things up. He turned to her about redoing the parade because she realized that people were moving from horse-drawn vehicles to automobiles.”

And Margaret Boyce was right, although the transition began in 1907; by 1915, the carriage industry had been decisively overtaken by the automobile industry.

The parade that year had Native American travois, men on horseback, surveyors for the railroad, early model cars and Overland Trail wagons. The Overland Trail was a stagecoach and wagon trail in the American West during the 19th century. It was most heavily used in the 1860s as an alternative route to the Oregon, California and Mormon trails.

In fact, they used to have stagecoach robbery shows, Buffalo Bill Wild West shows and a frontier wedding show at the Frontier Park Arena.

“Indian riders would come in, and you could hear the war-whoops and hollers … the rodeo got so big that we had to cut those elements out,” Kassel said.

Needless to say, it was an absolute hit, but unfortunately Boyce was only the parade chairman for that one year. When he stepped down, George Jones took over, and the parades went back to what they were before. By 1925, Jones started to question why they weren’t doing what they did in 1922 with all the stagecoaches and carriages and reached out to Margaret Boyce to see if they could bring that back permanently.

Together, they worked to see if people would be willing to donate their old carriages, and sure enough, dozens of abandoned carriages showed up at their doorstep. This is how their collection started to accumulate. They received private vehicles, old commercial vehicles, a range of stagecoaches and many more.

Since then, they’ve bought and received a plethora of them. Each vehicle is vastly different, which is what makes this collection so special.

Themes, historic value

One carriage to highlight is the “Carey Mail” carriage, which was once owned by Judge Joseph M. Carey. His family donated it in the 1930s after he passed, and it’s been through several restorations, and his grandkids still ride it today.

Other carriages involved in the parade are a “just married” themed carriage, mud wagons, four Yellowstone coaches (which are good for further distances; they’re called “traveling vehicles”), Yellowstone buses and chuckwagon racers. Yellowstone carriages are special because there are only about 50 or so in the world … and Yellowstone buses nowadays are worth around $5 million. They’re both valuable and rare donations.

“A journalist at the time, Daze Bristol, created floats for war bond drive parades,” said Kassel. “In 1925, Boyce reached out to Bristol to create a float for the parade. To this day, ‘Daze’s Dance Hall’ still rides in the parade.”

The CFD parade had a branding float dating to that time, too, where they had cattle, cowboys and live branding. They did this until about 10 years ago. They also owned an Army escort wagon, which was brought to Cheyenne the year it was founded and donated to CFD. Army escort wagons were called “howdy wagons,” according to Kassel.

The documentation of the CFD carriages wouldn’t be possible without the wagon doctors, volunteers and most importantly, Marietta Dinneen. Dinneen was a longtime CFD volunteer and founding member of the Old West Museum Board of Directors. Around 1978, she decided she wanted to preserve the carriages, which, at the time, were under the rodeo stands; she also joined the W-Heels group around 1966.

W-Heels are a group of women who are deeply involved in the parade. They’re in charge of making and preserving all of the costumes, ensuring all of the floats and carriages have people assigned to them, setting up specific costume try-on days, washing and oiling the carriages every year, and making sure wagon drivers know the schedule and fundraising for wagon doctors.

The group consists of about 50 women right now. When it started in 1925, it was just Margaret Boyce and a group of her friends, but it soon became an established, extremely hardworking group of women that officially became the W-Heels in 1943.

All of the carriages have a theme. They are meticulously planned out to make sure that the outfits fit the time period the float is from. This includes full head-to-toe costuming that people need to be fitted for in advance. All of the costumes are either donated or hand-made by the W-Heels women.

Dinneen died in 2022, but if it wasn’t for her passion for preservation, the W-Heels and the Parades Committee wouldn’t have anything. Before her passing, Dinneen made it her life’s mission to research vehicles, which she did from 1967 until the day she died. She worked on the carriages with her friends and found wagon doctors to start helping out with the ironwork and woodwork for wagons that needed fixing.

To this day, they still occasionally collect carriages, but until they get more space for the wagon doctors to work and more places to store the wagons outside of the Marietta Dinneen Barn and CFD Old West Museum, they probably will stick to the ones they have.

Wagon doctors

It takes wagon doctors anywhere from a week to nine months to three years to repair a vehicle. They’ll often make new parts themselves, and occasionally have to send parts out if they don’t have the full capabilities to restore them.

Wagon doctor and welder Ken Willis said he’s spent 17 years restoring vehicles.

“Restoring a carriage vehicle is kind of like remodeling an old house; the deeper you dig, the more [issues] you could find,” said Willis.

Mary Hartman, a member of W-Heels and longtime CFD volunteer, explained how preservation, safety and taking care of the horses are their top priorities when it comes to the CFD parades. She went on to say, “If a vehicle breaks down, we’ll always move people and adjust … and as for the horses, they’re usually here a week before the parades and are very well taken care of by our volunteers and their families.”

Melinda Aaron is a longtime CFD volunteer who for the past 18 years was a wagon driver with her husband. Aaron’s husband passed away last year, and she didn’t know if she was going to come back this year, but was asked back as a cook and accepted.

“It’s like a family. … When my husband passed, [volunteers] from CFD came out and supported me.” Even though she’s not a carriage driver anymore, she now makes meals for the carriage drivers.

The parade is going into its 99th year, and the committee has worked hard to preserve Boyce’s legacy, as well as Dinneen’s. There are some carriages and stagecoaches that have been in the parade since 1925, and for people who make it a tradition to go to the parade every year, it’s amazing to think about how their grandparents were around to see some of those carriages go by.

“It’s a precious and special experience [to see the parade],” said Kassel. “It’s something passed down from generations and is one of the most long-standing traditions in CFD. … There’s so much community engagement with the air base and Cheyenne. This is a way to celebrate the heritage of the American West and get glimpses of the past while also seeing the contrast between the new and old West.”