Cheyenne, Wyoming, Is on Its Method to Turning into the ‘Nashville of the West’ — and It is A lot Extra Inexpensive, Too

There’s a purpose Nashville, Tennessee, is a mecca for bachelor and bachelorette events. At a excessive stage, it’s a spot that caters to the theatricality related to nation music — cowboy boots, sequins, and raucous nights within the honky-tonks on Broadway. Guests can placed on their denim, don a cowboy hat, and embrace a light-hearted aspect of Music Metropolis, if just for a weekend.

The town additionally has a various tradition centered round artwork, vogue, and the meals and beverage world, catering to teams of vacationers with a wide range of pursuits. Your itinerary can embody every part from music festivals, barbecue dinners, and customised denim appointments to brewery hopping, historical past museums, and excursions of the totally different neighborhoods’ most photographed murals.

Whereas Nashville stays one of many high cities for pre-wedding celebrations and journey basically — even grabbing a spot on Journey + Leisure’s checklist of greatest U.S. cities within the 2024 World’s Greatest Awards — affordability is an element for guests to contemplate. Relying on the season, most vacationers ought to count on to pay anyplace from $200 to $500 per evening for a three-star lodge in downtown Nashville. In response to Brides, a bachelorette social gathering might simply price people as much as $600 for a three-day celebration; although Nashville Luxurious Keep estimates even larger after breaking down the value of lodging, meals, and actions. Fortunately, there’s a extra wallet-friendly, much less populated different to contemplate. Cheyenne, Wyoming is an roughly 65,000-person metropolis that, in some ways, has an identical enchantment to Nashville.

The capital of the Cowboy State, Cheyenne has an imitable id deeply tied to the Previous West, one which’s been nurtured because the railroad arrived in 1867 and solidified by the town’s legendary position within the rodeo world. Cheyenne Frontier Days, the world’s largest outside rodeo, happens each July, bringing nation music’s greatest stars, skilled bull riders, and a complete host of celebrations to city. The Daddy of ‘Em All rodeo isn’t the one purpose to plan a visit to this a part of Wyoming, although.

Over the previous few years, Cheyenne has grown and developed in a wide range of areas that create a pure comparability to Nashville — all whereas retaining a comparatively inexpensive price per go to.

Total Affordability

Accommodations are usually the most costly side of a gaggle journey to Nashville, particularly if the plan is to remain at considered one of downtown’s most sought-after properties. This isn’t the case in Cheyenne, the place most lodge choices price lower than $100 per room per evening. Certain, a majority of Cheyenne’s properties are run-of-the-mill funds chains, however an evening on the respected, conveniently positioned Little America Resort & Resort begins round $88 (although costs enhance throughout Cheyenne Frontier Days), giving budget-conscious vacationers a bit extra monetary leeway on the remainder of their journey. Moreover, Cheyenne has a variety of free issues for guests to do — a lot of which we’ve outlined beneath.

Honky-tonks and Giant-scale Public Artwork

Renee Jelinek and her husband, Jon, have owned and operated companies — together with The Lincoln, a music venue in a historic theater — in downtown Cheyenne for greater than a decade, they usually’ve witnessed firsthand the town’s enlargement, notably within the music scene. Reside music, she says, was once a rarity; right now, you could find it practically daily of the week. “Guests used to come back to Cheyenne for the Western tradition alone, however now we’re seeing [them] coming right here for a live performance and having fun with some Western tradition as a bonus, not as the aim,” she tells T+L.

Together with getting tickets to a present at The Lincoln, guests can take a look at the Outlaw Saloon — Cheyenne’s model of Robert’s Western World or Tootsie’s — or Bunkhouse Bar for stay music all through the week. Although Jelinek is hesitant to name Cheyenne a real “Nashville” simply but, she says the Wyoming metropolis has a “vibrant” tradition, showcasing “every part from cowl bands to arena-level artists,” together with a rising variety of artists creating authentic music throughout genres. On the finish of the day, nation music might have a distinguished position in each locations, nevertheless it’s removed from the one form of tunes locals and guests can get pleasure from.

The similarities in artwork and tradition between the 2 cities don’t finish with music. In reality, one of the vital apparent likenesses makes an instantaneous, colourful look to anybody exploring downtown Cheyenne: large-scale murals. Nashville has Kim Radford’s Dolly Parton mural and Kelsey Montague’s “What Lifts You” wings; Cheyenne has “Ladies’s Suffrage” by Chris Hoffmeister and Jordan Dean’s “The Buffalo Mural” and “Cheyenne,” the latter of which is a postcard-style murals that includes galloping purple horses. For a totally free group exercise, obtain the Uncover Downtown Cheyenne app to search out every mural and snap an image.

Picture ops in Cheyenne prolong past murals. The town’s eight-foot-tall, hand-painted cowboy boots, greater than 30 in complete, first started popping up round city as a joint artwork venture between the Cheyenne Depot Museum Basis and the Downtown Improvement Authority. As the gathering continues to develop, guests can study extra in regards to the items by way of a complimentary audio tour.

Customized Cowboy Hats, Western Put on, and Native Boutiques

If you happen to’ve ever been a part of a Nashville bachelorette social gathering, there’s an opportunity somebody within the group requested a cease at Rustler Hat Co. or Planet Cowboy to design a cowboy hat, adopted by a go to to one of many metropolis’s many cowboy boot shops (Boot Nation or Nashville Boot Co.) for Nashville-appropriate footwear. Cheyenne has related choices, albeit on a smaller scale.

At Wild J Buying and selling, prospects can add their very own design aptitude to a hat within the type of pins, feathers, and different equipment. For cowboy boots, there’s the Cheyenne Boot Barn outpost, a set of traditional Western put on housed within the historic, three-story crimson constructing often called The Wrangler. Not like Nashville, the place the very best buying is unfold throughout neighborhoods, Cheyenne’s boutiques are all inside just a few blocks. Together with your new cowboy boots in tow, it’s only a brief stroll to domestically owned outlets Alexis Drake and Indigo Buffalo Turquoise.

Breweries and Distilleries

Cheyenne’s meals scene, whereas not fairly on Nashville’s culinary stage, is “on the rise,” says Juan Coronado, chef and co-owner of Railspur. “Within the final 5 to 10 years, extra specialty outlets and domestically owned eateries have flourished and introduced new and daring flavors to Cheyenne.” The town’s spectacular roster of locations to drink additionally falls into this class.

Cheyenne, like Nashville, has greater than a few locations to sip on a domestically brewed (or distilled) drink along with your journey crew. Coronado recommends Freedom’s Edge Brewing Firm for its “welcoming ambiance and award-winning microbrews,” and Pine Bluffs Distilling in a neighboring city. “It is good for giant teams, and it is a enjoyable pit cease after a protracted journey. In addition they use all domestically grown grains of their whiskey,” he says. If you happen to’d moderately keep in Cheyenne, strive Black Tooth Brewing Firm, Confederate Beer Firm, Chronicles Distilling, and the newly opened Westby Edge Brewing Firm. And don’t overlook to snag the free Daddy of the Malt Go for drink offers at every cease.