News – Sheridan Media
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A few weeks ago, this column visited ice skating in Wyoming, in this column we will look at roller skating.
Roller skating has been a popular sport in Wyoming since before it even became a state. Cheyenne was one of the first towns to have a skating rink.
This from the Cheyenne Daily Leader, December 9, 1883- Roller skating is the most popular and innocent amusement of the country. The management of the skating rink is so well conducted that the most fastidious need not stay away.
These clips are from the Uinta Chieftain in Evanston, March 21, 1885
Not everyone was a fan of the new craze. Some, like this doctor, even thought it might be dangerous, especially for girls.
Cheyenne The Democratic Leader, February 19, 1885 – Roller Skating: A Leading Physician Gives His Opinion of its Effects.– Americans have a way of entering into a sport with a vim that borders close on mania. It was so with baseball, and it is so with roller skating, The latter is just now ”all the rage,” and under the circumstances it is probably useless to sound the note of warning, even though the exercise be dangerous to health, as the best medical experts in the east claim. The amusement which has grown to the proportions of a full-sized craze will run its course, be the results what they may.
Nevertheless, the press and the medical profession in the east are waging a hot war on roller skating. Dr. Thad. A. Reamy, whom there is not a better authority in the United States on the diseases of women, and whose word is law in the American Society of Gynecologists, says: The injurious effects arising to women who use the sewing machine are not due to the posture assumed, nor yet to the muscles employed in its use, but to the prolonged maintenance of the posture, the prolonged use of a certain set of muscles to the exclusion of others, and to the lack of opportunity for proper exercise in the open air. The moderate use of the sewing machine, as in the family, is not injurious.
Roller skating is quite another thing. It may possibly be indulged in to a moderate degree by young women without serious injury, but I have no hesitancy in the unqualified statement that it is an exercise for which women are anatomically and physiologically unfitted. To indulge in this exercise violently (and they do not seem to do it in moderation)— I say that to indulge in it violently, and for many hours in succession, under excitement and stimulation, as at skating rinks, must inflict lasting and irremediable injury upon the women who are participants. Of course, the damage to some must be much greater than to others.
Little girls, as well as those approaching womanhood, should be positively forbidden such exercise. At the present time the people of Cheyenne have the craze in a methodical and matter of fact way, but it promises to develop into a surging mania. Half an hour on roller skates can hardly hurt any one who is strong enough to skate at all, but two hours devoted to the exercise each evening must be injurious.
The advice given by Dr. Reamy will not be followed, but it has value as a decision of the question regarding the injurious possibilities of roller skating.
It is a comment on who women were often viewed back then. They would probably be scandalized at what sports women participate in today.
Even pastors jumped on and preached about the fad. This evangelist, felt it was benign, if people prayed about it.
The Democratic Leader (Weeklyed.) March 5, 1885 – Moody On Roller Skating.”I have received several inquiries about the morality of skating rinks,” said Mr. Moody the evangelist, at a revival meeting in the First Presbyterian church, New York, yesterday. “I have only this to say: That where the godly and ungodly mix, the godly are going to suffer. If you go to the skating rink and slide around on roller skates for the glory of God, it is all right.
I remember that I preached in Scotland on the liquor traffic, and when I was through a brewer came to meand said if I found a passage in the Bible against the use of liquor he would give up its manufacture. I turned to the bible and read: ‘Whatever you do, do it for the glory of God.’
Then I said to the brewer: “Now just you make your stuff for the glory of God, and it will be all right. Pray over it for the glory of God and the blessing of mankind. Do that if you can.’ And I say the same about roller skating. If you pray over it and skate for the glory of God it is all right.”
Of course, when the fad showed no sign of dying out, the towns created places for young and old to roller skate.
Sheridan Daily Enterprise, August 19, 1911 – Rollerskating At The Kirby – The sport of roller skating seemed to have been revived in Sheridan, to judge from the large patronage the Kirby rink is receiving every evening.
Mrs. Kimmell has placed the floor in excellent condition, and is given the management of the popular amusement place her personal attention, with the result that it is being conducted in the best manner in its history. The sport of roller skating maybe enjoyed at the Kirby every evening when the place is not used for show or dancing purposes. Mrs. Kimmell extends a cordial invitation to visitors at any and all times.
There were contests for roller skaters, like this one mentioned in the Sheridan Post, April 27, 1906
There were even two boys that went from coast to coast on their roller skates and went through southern Wyoming on their way.
The Laramie Daily Boomerang, August 13, 1910 –Roller Skating To The Coast – Two 16-Year-Old Boys Carrying Message from Mayor Gaynor to San Francisco Mayor. – Cheyenne, Aug. 13, — Abe Levine, holder or the world’s roller-skating record for three miles and Max Brody, 16-year-old boys of New York, are in the city today roller skating their way across the continent,
They are backed by New York men on a $4,000 bet that they cannot reach San Francisco in 10 skating days, with the privilege of resting on Sundays and rainy days. They left New York on May 9, having been ninety days out and sixty-three walking days. They are carrying a message from Mayor Gaynor of New York to Mayor McCarthy of San Francisco and are obliged to make their own living on the way by giving roller skating exhibitions on the streets and at show houses.
They walk most of the way but carry large-wheeled rollers which they can wear on level roads and skate as on a street pavement, making better time than walking and the change being a rest from the weary trudging over the roads.
The boys are expected to reach here sometime this evening.
One has to remember, that in 1910, there were no interstate highways, and many of the roads were still dirt or gravel. In 1903, two men set out in an automobile to travel coast to coast, and they had to contend with mud and flooded roads. Even in 1919, especially in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states, there were few paved roads. So roller skating from coast to coast must have included a lot of walking.
Seeing that the craze was going to continue, Sheridan was urged to opened some roller skating rinks.
The Sheridan Enterprise, June 19, 1921 – Pavilion Opening Is Being Urged– Roller skating, more or less popular in other cities, seeks never to come into vogue in Sheridan., It has been wondered why; but a sufficient answer comes now from the fact that there is no place to skate. Dancing, it is accepted is very well done indoors, because there is little real exercise is left to the popular toddle; but the strenuous of roller skating seems to. Necessitate more of the out-of- doors to give it vogue. Hence some are asking why not an open-air pavilion in one of the city’s commodious parks?
Buffalo, in the early spring, reported plans to build this summer a pavilion in the new “Victory Park.” both projects being promoted there by the workmen of the park association, who also fostered the swimming pool for the kiddies now in process of construction, likewise located m the Victory Park there. Perhaps the promotion in Sheridan of the swimming pool for kiddies may later result in getting behind the expressed need for an open-air pavilion also.
Smaller towns, like Monarch, also embraced the roller-skating craze.
The Sheridan Enterprise, January 8, 1920
Roller skating has waxed and waned in popularity. It declined in the 20s, but became popular again in the 40s and 50s. That decade was known as the Golden Age of Roller Skating.
Many Sheridan residents will remember that during the 60s and 70s, the exhibit hall at the fairgrounds was often used as a roller-skating rink.
In the 1970s, during the disco music craze, roller rinks offered lights and music to enhance the skaters experience. Skates evolved in the 80s into inline skates, instead of the two wheels front and back, like the old roller skates, inline or rollerblades were designed with the wheels a line more like the blade of ice skates.
There are still some roller rinks around Wyoming, should anyone want to revisit an old entertainment that was popular nearly 150 years ago.
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Last modified: January 12, 2026