The Blue Front

The first females jurors gathered in front of the first courtroom in Laramie – The Blue Front (notorious as Con Moyers (831) Bar, then a theatre for traveling acting troops, later August Trabing used it as his fist store in Laramie)
A re-enactment of the first jury trial to include female jurors is pictured here in front of the first courtroom in Laramie — the National Theatre.  The theatre was originally called “The Blue Front” and  was notorious as Con Moyer’s Bar.

The Blue Front, located on South Front Street, opened as a “Bucket of Blood” style saloon owned by Con Moyers, one of the men hung during the vigilante uprising of October 1868.

Later, the building became the National Theatre, where many plays and performances were stages. Laramie’s courtroom was moved to the National Theatre to seat the world’s first female jurors, as the locations where other court cases had been held were deemed unsuitable for a proper woman to enter. Even then, it took a great deal of convincing that the theatre was respectable and safe. Justice Howe told the men and women of the jury he had “long seen that woman was a victim to the vices, crimes and immoralities of man, with no power to protect and defend herself from these evils.” Jury duty gave women “such powers of protection.”

In 1869, Augustus Trabing moved his headquarters to Laramie in the old Blue Front Theatre. It was a one-story wooden structure that he painted a bright blue, hence the name Blue Front. When Trabing opened the Laramie Grocery Company at the corner of Garfield and South Second Street, the theatre was used as a warehouse.

Learn more about the history of the Blue Front. 

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