Frontier Flea Market

The signs come first. They are plastered across the front of a two-story brick double storefront at 1515–1517 Carey Avenue in downtown Cheyenne, and they list what waits inside: furniture, lamps, clothing, hats, depression-era glassware, knives, religious items. The sign that draws the most interest reads “Specializing in Guns for the Ladies.” By 2023 the shop no longer sold firearms. Behind the signs were rooms of shelves and furniture holding books, dishes, cutlery and swords, all bought by Linda Romero, sole proprietor of Frontier Antiques and Collectibles. She kept more stock in a basement storage space and brought pieces up as others sold. “Everything sells eventually,” she told a WyoFile reporter that year.

The shop has gone by several names in print. Visit Cheyenne lists it as Frontier Antiques & Collectibles at 1517 Carey. A flea-market directory calls it Frontier Flea Market at 1515. A Facebook page names it Frontier Antiques and Firearms. In 2010 the Wyoming Tribune Eagle spelled it Frontier Antiques and Collectables. On July 16, 2025, a Tribune Eagle classified put the business up for sale. A reviews-aggregator page reached from the tourism bureau’s listing carries a banner saying the location has closed, but Visit Cheyenne still lists the shop and no news report confirms a closing.

A Monday in July, 2023

David Dudley of WyoFile spent a muggy July Monday in the shop, less than a week before Cheyenne Frontier Days opened its 127th season. Romero arrived a few minutes before 10 a.m. She propped the front door open, worked her way back through the shelves flipping light switches, and turned on the fans set around the room. Then she turned on the radio, and Prince was singing “You don’t have to be rich to be my girl.”

She led her first customer past the books and dishes and stopped at a vanity. “I’ve got this beautiful cherry oak vanity with matching chair,” she said. “I found it at an estate sale. It’s worth $400, easy, but I’ll let you have it for . . . $300.” The woman declined, so Romero offered her the whole shop instead: “I’ll give you the whole thing for . . . $350,000. That price is a steal for a turnkey business that’s always done good.” The woman smiled politely and left.

Two women came in next. One wanted a Saint Michael rosary for her son, who had been sworn into the Cheyenne Police Department that day. Romero led her to a section of candles and rosaries printed with pictures of the saints. A little after noon an elderly man set a can of 7-Up and a $5 bill on the glass display case and said his wife had recently died of cancer. “Now, I’m all alone,” he said. “When you come in here, you’re not alone,” Romero answered. He toasted her on his way out.

Behind him came two young men. “Where do you keep the firearms?” one asked. Romero offered swords and knives instead. “I don’t have much use for swords,” he said.

Near closing time, with the shop empty, Romero recalled the big sales of recent weeks. A California woman had spent $2,400 on rare old hats and diamonds. A man had paid $1,500 for a lamp mounted on a painted ceramic base shaped like a cowboy. During the Frontier Days rush she also ran a hotdog stand out front, and the busy season, as she called it, earned her enough to winter in Las Vegas, Nevada. Asked when she would retire, she laughed. “Why would I do that? I love what I do. I’m not gonna retire till I can’t unlock the door.”

The truck stop on the westside

Romero’s roots are in the other Las Vegas, the northern New Mexico railroad town where she was born and raised. She met Albert Romero there. The two married in 1960 and drove to Cheyenne, a city she had never seen. Albert took a construction job, they raised two daughters, and she went to work for Pat Fleischli, who ran a truck stop on the westside of town.

“She taught me where, and how, to buy things,” Romero said of Fleischli. “And she taught me that customer service is the most important thing in business.” Her own rule is to ask people what they want: “A lot of times, they come in and they’re looking, looking, looking. They don’t know what they want until you ask them.” Her mother had told her she could be a successful businesswoman. “My grandfather told me I could be anything,” she said, “and I believed him!” By 2023 she counted 37 years in business.

Carman Hess, who owns and runs Wyoming Home, first met Romero in 2001. “She’s always looking for the next thing that people need,” Hess said. “Whether it’s hotdogs or firearms, she identifies a niche, then jumps in to provide it.”

Elk, deer, and a hundred rifles

Romero was not raised around guns. That changed on a hunting trip in 2008. “I bagged an elk and a deer and I was hooked,” she said. Within a year she was selling guns and ammunition at the shop. First she had to pass a background check herself, then learn to run them on others. The checks gave her a way out with some buyers. “Certain people just shouldn’t have a gun,” she said. “I could always say that the results of a background check came back, and I couldn’t sell it to them.” Men sometimes tried to bargain her down. “I’d have a really beautiful pistol for $1,200, and they’d offer $600,” she said. “I had to learn to be firm. My livelihood depended upon it.”

In April 2010 the shop began selling a run of 100 commemorative rifles with American Legacy Firearms of Fort Collins, Colorado, for the Old West Museum. Each was a 30-30 Winchester Model 94 made by Mossberg. Artist Greg Randall designed the engraved scenes of Princess Blue Water, Joella Irwin, Sharkey Irwin, Bruegman’s Chuckwagon and the Cheyenne to Deadwood stage. The rifles sold for $1,299, rising to $1,499 in May, and $100 of each sale went to the museum. Steve Faler, the firm’s co-president, said the model dates back to the time of Tom Horn. “It’s shot more deer and elk than any other model,” he said. An engraved Winchester Bowie knife also went on sale for $150. It pictured Ron Duckworth, known as Laughing Elk, then the museum’s facilities manager.

Romero sold guns for more than ten years. “My daughters pleaded with me to stop selling guns for years,” she said. “One day, I woke up and decided it was time to move on. I sold all of them.” Hess thought about buying the stock but decided against it. In 2019 Romero paid cash for a house in Las Vegas with money from gun sales. “That’s my retirement plan,” she said.

Heine Shuman’s saloon

The building stands in the Downtown Cheyenne Historic District, the city’s first business core. Lots there were among the first sold after James R. Whitehead opened the Union Pacific Land Office on July 9, 1867. The 1977 nomination of the district, prepared by Carol A. Nathan, included 1515–1517 Carey Avenue. The district was enrolled on the National Register in December 1978. A 1979 addendum lists Anna Shuman as owner of record of the Shuman Building at 1517 and Clark A. Smith as owner of 1515.

According to the 1977 nomination, the Shuman Building at 1517 was built in 1909 by Heine Shuman, a locally known prize fighter who ran a saloon on the main floor. The 1995 resurvey by historian Robert G. Rosenberg dates the whole structure, 1515 and 1517 together, to 1909 as a two-story brick double storefront, and counts it a noncontributing element of the district. The earlier nomination tells it differently. It holds that 1515 was built several years before the Shuman Building, and that the square nails and oak tongue-and-groove floors inside gave away its age.