Cheyenne South Boys Begin Basketball Season 3-0

The Cheyenne South boys basketball team went 5-13 a year ago and they have the talent to surpass that win total by a significant margin this season. The Bison won all three of their games in the Casper tournament, with solid wins over Rock Springs and Green River plus a narrow 63-61 win over Natrona.

Maurie Alexander started the season on the right foot with 23 points against Rock Springs and the 6-2 senior showed great touch around the rim and a pretty good outside shot too. LeeAndre Ray and Jeremiah Moyte, among others, will provide some electric offense and this team has a huge upside. The 4A East is usually pretty rugged so South will be tested as the season goes on.

We had a chance to chat with Alexander and Moyte after that season-opening win over Rock Springs. That was a great way to tip off the season.

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Cheyenne South Basketball

Gallery Credit: Frank Gambino

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.