07/23/2026
Some 30 years ago, I was a CFD Dandy.
My favorite thing?
Putting the big chestnut mare to bed on a show night.
Around 9:30 or 10 every night, I'd do one last check of Peppermint before heading home. As the carnival whirled and the music from the concert seeped toward the north end of the park, I'd check her water and hand her a few treats.
Most nights, she was already curled up in her stall, her big head bobbing between her forelegs as she dozed. I'd slip in, then stick my hand through the white and red stall door to shut us in together.
We'd sit there, just her and me. Peppermint was not a lovey horse as anyone who knew her would attest. But at the end of the day, she would allow me the privilege of loving her. She'd shove her big head in my lap, her neck curled around me. She especially loved having a spot just behind her ear rubbed, tilting her head this way and that so I could get the best angle.
And so we'd sit and listen to the quieter side of Frontier Park. Hooves clopping on the road as newly arrived contestants found their stalls. A errant whoop or howl of laughter. Other Dandy horses munching their hay, giggles from teenage girls, occasionally the whooosh of the Super Loops from the carnival.
It was my quiet time to reflect on my day and the privilege of being a part of something so big that has lasted through the ages, my time to enjoy the quiet companionship of the most valiant horse I've ever known.
Eventually the mare would heave a big sigh and flop her head over to lay stretched out in the sawdust, my cue to call it a night. And each night as I let myself out of her stall, she'd give me one soft nicker. Just one, low and sweet, my own personal goodnight.
Those are just a few of about a million memories I have wrapped up in Frontier Park. Because on those nights, it wasn't just where I kept my horse. It was home. It was part of me, of how I was raised and who I was becoming.
Last night as I walked the grounds taking photos for the PR committee, I heard one guest comment and it stuck with me all night.
"This isn't the CFD I remember."
You don't have to be the CEO of CFD or serve on the Board of Directors to feel ownership of this place. If you've competed here, volunteered here, ridden in the parades, flipped pancakes, worked a gate, sold a program, or simply sat in the grandstands year after year, you know what I mean. Cheyenne Frontier Days belongs to all of us.
And I think that's really what people are so upset about.
People are mourning the feeling that something they've loved, defended, and passed from one generation to the next is changing in ways they no longer recognize.
And on the other side? Those of us still in the trenches working every day to make it happen? We feel under attack, like our time and effort is wasted, that nothing we do can make it better.
And that's not a matter of numbers. It's a matter of heart.
When it comes down to it, I think what all any of us really want is this: to know that the spirit of "The Daddy" — that magic and mystique and legend and lore and sense of family, those things that made us fall in love with it in the first place—is still being protected.
