CLASSIC CHEYENNE: The Cole Shopping Center

In December of 2020, Blue Federal Credit Union completed its new headquarters at the corner of Converse and Pershing in Cheyenne. Well, it’s not so much a ‘corner’ as it is the smooth edge of a roundabout, but anyway. Before Blue FCU built its new campus, the site was at one time a premier shopping destination for Cheyenne. From the 1950s through 2016 it was Cheyenne's Cole Shopping Center.

Local businessman Frank Cole bought the land that would become a Cheyenne gathering place in the 1950s when the corner of Converse and Pershing was the edge of town. Starting in 1952, three different Safeway grocery stores called the Cole home over its half-century of existence.  A plethora of other stores served the neighborhood too. From the movie theater to Blockbuster; there was the Cole Department Store, the fabric store, the East Branch of the Carnegie Library, and so much more.

As Cheyenne grew and changed, the Shopping Center fell into decline. Stores closed and new ones didn't take their places. The anchor of the area, Safeway, closed for good in 2016 with much of the rest following. In 2018 the buildings were demolished and the new construction began. 

The Cole was so integral to the neighborhood that when we asked on social media for folks’ memories we were flooded with hundreds of responses. 

Check out many of those memories below, along with several pictures of the Cole Shopping Center, mostly from near the end in the twenty-teens.


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Cheapest Places to Live in Wyoming

Do you like money? Do you like not like spending it? Well then my friend, I have an internet list for you. Or friends at Homesnacks crunched a bunch of numbers to find the cheapest places in Wyoming to live.

The Homesnacks folks looked at US Census data and the cost of living for the area. "We were especially interested in home and rental prices in places with more than 1,000 residents," they say.

If you like small town living in the natural beauty of the wilds of Wyoming, you'll find plenty of ideas on this list.

The Most Expensive Neighborhoods in Cheyenne

Cheyenne, like any city, is made up of many different neighborhoods. While none of them are as famous as SoHo in New York City or Five Points in Denver, Wyoming's capital city has about 20 neighborhoods that its nearly 65 thousand residents live in.

Neighborhood Scout scoured the information on the Chey-town neighborhoods that make up the 32.37 square miles of the city to find where the most expensive places are to live. We're talking about real estate here, not the price of milk or anything. That kind of stuff is pretty uniform across the city.

In December of 2020, Blue Federal Credit Union completed its new headquarters at the corner of Converse and Pershing in Cheyenne. Well, it’s not so much a ‘corner’ as it is the smooth edge of a roundabout, but anyway. Before Blue FCU built its new campus, the site was at one time a premier shopping destination for Cheyenne. From the 1950s through 2016 it was Cheyenne's Cole Shopping Center.
Local businessman Frank Cole bought the land that would become a Cheyenne gathering place in the 1950s when the corner of Converse and Pershing was the edge of town. Starting in 1952, three different Safeway grocery stores called the Cole home over its half-century of existence.  A plethora of other stores served the neighborhood too. From the movie theater to Blockbuster; there was the Cole Department Store, the fabric store, the East Branch of the Carnegie Library, and so much more.
As Cheyenne grew and changed, the Shopping Center fell into decline. Stores closed and new ones didn't take their places. The anchor of the area, Safeway, closed for good in 2016 with much of the rest following. In 2018 the buildings were demolished and the new construction began.
The Cole was so integral to the neighborhood that when we asked on social media for folks’ memories we were flooded with hundreds of responses.
Check out many of those memories above, along with several pictures of the Cole Shopping Center, mostly from near the end in the twenty-teens.

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