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The Cheyenne South Side Historic District is adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad freight yards on the south and is physically separated by the tracks from Cheyenne’s original commercial district and residential neighborhoods. The City of Cheyenne was a railroad town created by the building of the first transcontinental railroad by the Union Pacific Railway, which laid tracks through the region in 1867, so that the original focus of the town was the rail yards and d

epot. This district is unique in that it represents a working class neighborhood, originally dependent on the railroad for employment and separated from Cheyenne by the intervening multiple tracks and freight yards.

Cheyenne was only one of six major towns that emerged along the right-of-way of the first transcontinental railroad built by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1867 and 1868 through the frontier region that soon became southern Wyoming territory. In early 1868, it was selected by the Union Pacific Railroad as the site of its principal depot and repair shops due to its strategic location at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, midway between the cities of Omaha, Nebraska, and Ogden, Utah. The South Side comprises the original “blue collar” residential area of Cheyenne and includes the southern half of the original city plat as filed in 1867 by General Grenville M. Dodge, chief engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad.