Cheyenne is the capital of the U.S. state of Wyoming. It is the principal city of the Cheyenne, Wyoming Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Laramie County, Wyoming. As of September 2005, it had an estimated population of 55,362. It is the county seat of Laramie County and the largest city in Wyoming.---------------The city was not named by Grenville Dodge as his memoirs state, but rather by his friends who accompanied him to the area Dodge called "Crow Creek Crossing". It was named for the Native American Cheyenne nation ("Shay-an"), one of the most famous and prominent Great Plains tribes, closely allied with the Arapaho. The Cheyenne were among the fiercest fighters on the plains. Not pleased with the changes brought about by the railroad, they had harassed both railroad surveyors and construction crews. -------------------------- As the capital of the Wyoming Territory, and the only city of any consequence, as well as being the seat of the stockyards where cattle were loaded on the Union Pacific Railroad, the city's Cheyenne Club was the natural meeting place for the organization of the large well-capitalized ranches called the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. (See Johnson County War of 1892, the largest of the "range wars" of early Wyoming history). The newspaper offices of Asa Shinn Mercer's Northwestern Livestock Journal were burned down when the paper, which was founded as a public relations vehicle for the moneyed cattle interests, began to write scathing accounts of the events that were unfolding on the open range. His account is told in his book The Banditti of the Plains,. ------------------------------- As a town created by the railroad, Cheyenne fittingly preserves one of the eight surviving Union Pacific Big Boy locomotives ("4004"), some of the largest steam locomotives ever built, designed for hauling freight over the Rocky Mountains at high speeds. These engines typically hauled 100 freight cars up ruling grades between Cheyenne and Ogden, Utah, at 50 miles per hour. The locomotive now resides in a city park. The Union Pacific's last live-steam engines still reside in Cheyenne. The Challenger 3985 and the Northern 844, UP's last steam passenger engine, are maintained there. They are used for display and excursions across the county. --------------------------------- Alferd Packer, the only American ever convicted of cannibalism (though the official charge was murder, since cannibalism is not a crime in the United States), was apprehended in Cheyenne, March 11, 1883. Tom Horn, the notorious Pinkerton's agent who had been operating as a hit man for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, was hanged in Cheyenne for a murder that he probably did not commit, on November 20, 1903, a day before his 43 birthday. -------------------------------- Several ships of the United States Navy have been named USS Cheyenne in honour of this city as well as a couple of tug boats working around New York City.