The Cheyenne Ring: Cattle Country’s Power
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The cowboy myth says it was all grit and open range: noble ranchers, hardworking cowhands, civilizing a wild frontier. The truth is messier.
In this episode, we trace who actually ran Wyoming in the late 1800s, and the answer isn't "cowboys." It's a railroad, a small circle of cattle barons, and two senators, nicknamed "the Cheyenne Ring", who answered to both at once. We follow the Wyoming Stock Growers Association's reach across state lines, all the way to Custer County, Nebraska, where the same fight over land and power played out fourteen years earlier: a shooting, a…
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