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The Gillette Downtown Historic District is significant under Criterion A, as it is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to broad historical patterns. The period of historical significance dates from 1898, the construction date of the oldest building in the district, to 1971, the most recent construction date of a contributing building in the district. This district represents the commercial heart of a major northeastern Wyoming city. Gillette was a railroad town, created by the arrival of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1891. It became the county seat when Campbell County was created from the western halves of Crook and Weston counties in 1911. Gillette was also strategically located on the route of the Black and Yellow Trail, one of America’s first transcontinental highways that ran from Chicago, Illinois to Yellowstone National Park. From its humble origins as one of many late nineteenth-century railroad stations, it grew into a modern city with a diversified economy that serves a regional ranching, coal mining, and oil and gas industry community. Despite the town’s “boom and bust” periods, often dependent on coal production as well as the general economy, Gillette’s growth was steady:  the number of buildings that were constructed in the commercial district were almost evenly spread across the decades, from the late 1890s through the early 1970s.

The district is also being nominated under Criterion C, because the buildings in the district represent a wide array of architectural styles and influences, including late Victorian Italianate commercial buildings, residential Victorian architecture with Queen Anne elements, and Classical Revival, Neo-Classical/Starved Classicism, Art Deco, and early-to-mid twentieth-century public and commercial architecture, retaining single or double storefronts. The buildings of the district reflect several identifiable building periods in the town’s history and also feature the use of several different building materials, including brick, concrete block and ornamental concrete blocks.