Pine Bluffs Trail Days

A melodrama at Sixth and Elm

The 2026 Pine Bluffs Trail Days opened on Wednesday, July 29, at the Historic Pine Bluffs High School, Sixth and Elm. At 7:20 p.m. the town crowned its Trail Days Queen, Karleigh Lukassen. Ten minutes later a local cast raised the curtain on “In Search of the Holy Grill.” The ticket page describes the play as a comedy in which a church congregation cooks up a plan to overcome an unexpected challenge, with a secret barbecue recipe at the center of the action. It ran again on the following nights, and on Thursday and Friday a dinner was served in the building before the show. Tickets were sold online and at the door.

The school is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. According to the town, its most distinctive element is the dome over the gymnasium, built of poured concrete and covered with a bank of skylights. In 1930 geometric shapes and floral designs were hand painted on the concrete beams and on the lights that circle the domed ceiling. The building now holds recreational and cultural events and houses a few independent, locally owned businesses.

The queen’s duties began before the coronation. In July 2026 Lukassen attended the Queen’s Brunch at Cheyenne Frontier Days, and she represented Pine Bluffs Trail Days in that city’s parades on July 19, 22, 24, and 26. The town’s royalty program names a Queen and an Attendant each year.

Roping on Friday, the parade on Saturday

The theme for 2026 was “American Roots & Cowboy Boots,” and the schedule printed in the Pine Bluffs Post spread across the town. On Friday, July 31, a pool party began at 1 p.m. at the Pine Bluffs Pool on East Eighth. From 5 to 7 p.m. the mayor and town council offered a Toast to Trail Days at the Pine Bluffs Distillery on Bourbon Street. At the arena complex, at Beech Street and U.S. Highway 30, jackpot team roping entries opened at 6 p.m., and the roping started at 7.

Saturday, August 1, began at 7 a.m. with the Longhorn Stampede, a one-mile or 5K walk and run from the Community Center on Lawson Street. The organizers called it “the BIG day.” It held the parade, Sunfest, the rodeo, another night of the melodrama, and the 16th annual Covered Wagon Car & Bike Show, with classic cars, custom builds, and motorcycles. The festival’s own listing also names barbecue and live music.

The Post described the parade for the 75th edition, in 2025. It started at the south end of Main Street and moved north. Members of American Legion Post 60 of Pine Bluffs and Post 21 of Burns led it off, and their honor guard presented the flag while the national anthem was sung in front of the park. Hundreds of spectators lined the street. Laramie County Fire District 5 sent numerous trucks, and a run of old and new tractors drew attention, Jim Merryfield wrote, “from young and old alike.” The 2025 program also included a period costume photo shoot and crafts and games for children.

Bricks and quilts on the last day

Sunday, August 2, began at the old high school with a free breakfast at 9:30 a.m. and Cowboy Church at 10. “Everyone is welcome,” the festival’s announcement read, “whether you’re a longtime local, visiting for Trail Days, or just looking for a place to worship.” Later in the day came the coed mud volleyball tournament, which the town lists as the 35th annual in its 2027 calendar. The sixth annual Conner Graves & Tyler Morgan Memorial Cornhole Tournament was played at the Pine Bluffs Baseball Field, with proceeds going to local graduating seniors.

At 1 p.m. the Town of Pine Bluffs, the Donald Eisenhauer American Patriots, and Rocky Mountain Honor Flight met in Veterans Park. The program called for laying 23 new memorial bricks and unveiling a digital living memorial of more than 275 connected photographs for 305 veterans. Seventeen Vietnam veterans who were waiting for their Honor Flight were to receive hand-crafted Quilts of Valor. The organizers asked the town to “bring your flags, your red-white-and-blue spirit, your Welcome Home signs, your clapping hands, and hugs,” and to give the men “the long-overdue homecoming they deserved 50+ years ago.” An ice cream social followed, with proceeds going to future Honor Flight missions.

Rock Ranch and the Texas Trail

“For over three quarters of a century the town of Pine Bluffs has been celebrating Trail Days,” Merryfield wrote in 2025. He added that the town had marked it every year “with the possible exception of the COVID epidemic,” and that the celebration honors the town’s place in the westward movement and in the young rail system.

That history begins in 1868, when the Union Pacific arrived at a place called Rock Ranch. A note in the Clarice Whittenburg papers at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center records what stood there then: a tent, a slab shack with a stone chimney, and a square shed of canvas-covered poles. They served as a grocery store, a bakery, and a saloon. Union Pacific officials later renamed the town for the pine trees on the bluffs above it. In 1884, by the town’s account, Longhorn herds were coming up the Texas Trail, which ran through Pine Bluffs, and the frontier town soon became the largest cattle shipping point on the Union Pacific Railroad. Pine Bluffs is now the easternmost Wyoming community on Interstate 80.

The trail also has a museum in town, at Third and Market. An unsigned history from the mid-1990s says that Charles Binning “started the whole thing” in 1985, when he gave the Pastime Club clothing that had belonged to his mother-in-law, Katherine Smith. The clothes dated to the early 1900s and were in excellent condition. Club members wanted a place to show them. The town council leased the club its old power plant for $1 for 99 years, and the building still held two diesel engines and generators, each 12 feet long and 10 feet high. The Texas Trail Museum opened at the end of May 1988, with three exhibits on loan from the Wyoming State Museum and volunteers working as hostesses.

The class of 1958

On August 3, 2008, Bill McCarthy of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle watched Trail Days in City Park. A young tae kwon do student hurdled a pyramid of five classmates to crack a board with his foot, and children circled the edge of the park. In a shady spot nearby sat the Pine Bluffs High School Class of 1958, in front of a pictorial tribute to their graduation 50 years earlier. Only two of the 21 members still lived in town. Thirteen of the 17 surviving classmates came for at least part of the celebration, and their last two reunions had been held during Trail Days.

The classmates could tell what had become of each of their dead, beginning with a senior killed in a hunting accident who graduated posthumously. “He was to be a Rhodes scholar,” said Jean Ginder of Cheyenne. Gerri Haines, who had moved to Colorado, remembered the town as a place where “everybody knew everybody else. So you could never do anything, because everybody knew about it.” The schedule for that Sunday listed a free breakfast from the mayor and town council, a mud volleyball tournament at 10 a.m., and a jackpot and fun shoot at the shooting range at 1 p.m. Corrine Mercer, who had come from California, said of the celebration, “There’s a lot more people, and a lot more activities.”