Car Hire Laramie - Mini guide to Laramie
Laramie typifies the old Wild West, situated amid a landscape of plains studded with bizarrely shaped boulders and outcrops. At first glance, Laramie seems like just another rural Wyoming town, but behind downtown's quaint Victorian façades lies a lively and vibrant modern cultural community.
The centrepiece of the ambitious Wyoming Territorial Park is the old territorial prison. Dating from 1872 and a touch over-restored, it holds informative displays on the Old West and women in Wyoming. It also has huge mug shots of famous ex-convicts, among them Butch Cassidy, who was incarcerated here for 18 months in 1896.
Other exhibits in the park include the Women of the West Museum and the Ranchland Exhibit. Frontier Town is great fun for the whole family, complete with gunfights, trick horseback riding, saloon shows, storytelling by Calamity Jane, sarsaparilla and cheap souvenirs. The annual Beerfest, held at the beginning of September, is a must for those who enjoy a cold brew.
The Wyoming Children's Museum and Nature Center is a great hands-on experience for the kids, with gold panning, a crawl-through beaver lodge and some live reptiles. Also worth a stop is the Laramie Plains Museum, housed in the magnificent Victorian mansion of Edward Ivinson and featuring enthralling antiques and relics from the frontier days.
Laramie owes much to the University of Wyoming for making the town a complete tourist destination. Aside from adding life to the town’s downtown areas, the university has some excellent museums and attractions.
The University of Wyoming Visitor Center is the place to gather maps and information on the several free museums and sights of interest on campus, including: the Anthropology Museum, the Museum of Geology, the University Art Museum, American Heritage Center and the Rocky Mountain Herbarium.
The downtown area has a great mix of day spas, vegetarian cafés and second-hand bookstores, mainly catering to the University of Wyoming students, whose campus spreads east from the town centre.
