I’m supposed to be sharing Linden’s Cheyenne office with my coworkers, but between you and me: it’s mine! The office isn’t in just any old building: We are in the Commercial Building, built by Francis E. Warren in 1883. This building was built for business, with large windows on the first floor for retail, and an even larger skylight for the offices upstairs. These offices have quite a history.
Right next door to my office is the room with the large bay window where Deputy Marshall Joe LeFors allegedly got Tom Horn drunk and talked him into confessing to murder more than 100 years ago. Horn was the last man legally hung in Wyoming, and the topic of a feature film and many books.
A look into the Tom Horn room. Photo by Tiffany Whitsitt.
I have a history with this building too. In December 2004, a fire in Mary’s Bake Shoppe spread to Wyoming Home, destroying both businesses, along with the historic buildings they occupied. At the time I was a photographer for the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, and I followed firemen around in the aftermath. We climbed a ladder from the alley behind the buildings into the second floor of the Commercial Building, looking for damage from the fire. What I saw in those rooms was a piece of history. Period wallpaper, silver radiators and dark, hand-carved woodwork decorated long-neglected office space.
Photos by Kelly Etzel Douglas/Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
Wyoming Home’s owners rebuilt their business, taking over the Commercial Building and the National Bank Building next door. They restored the office space upstairs and put in plush carpet, Western fixtures, and an elevator. Fast-forward a dozen years, and the Commercial Building is bustling, with shoppers on the main floor, and engineers, lawyers and marketing experts upstairs.
A peek into Linden Marketing’s new office. Photo by Tiffany Whitsitt.
We have sleek desks with rolling chairs in our Cheyenne office, but you’ll find me at the conference table, staking my claim. This is beautiful. This is mine.
KELLY ETZEL DOUGLAS
Having endured an anthrax scare, blizzards and prisons in the name of journalism, Kelly spends her time trying NOT to tell war stories around the cappuccino machine. She’s the publications manager at Linden and the queen of the Cheyenne office.