Even before Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, Thomas Marshall, made his famous remark about the need for good five-cent cigars in the smoke shop of the Willard Hotel, nearly every Wyoming community boasted a cigar “factory.”
It took a while for the hometown industry to start. When the army and Native people were the only inhabitants of what is now Wyoming, cigars were imported. According to contemporary record, cigars were popular enough that blue smoke filled many a barracks or bunkhouse. The sutler’s ledger for Fort Laramie, held in the collection of the Wyoming State Archives, shows entries for cigar purchases on nearly every page. They ranged from the $8 per box variety to the more expensive $.20 per cigar brands in pre-inflation 1866 Wyoming. Similar entries are in the sutler’s ledger for Fort Bridger.
The first census of Wyoming in 1870 showed two cigar makers living in the territory—one in Rawlins and the other in Laramie. Both were listed as living in local hotels so it is unknown if they worked there or were just passing through on the Union Pacific Railroad.
Imported cigars dominated the market for the next ten years. By the census time in 1880, the cigar marker population in the state was down to one–another hotel dweller in Rawlins.
Chewing tobacco and snuff were popularized in underground coal-mining towns. Coal-company operators banned cigars, pipes and cigarettes in their mines and around their properties following a series of highly publicized coal mine explosions that were blamed on coal-bed methane ignited by a burning tobacco product,
The boom in cigars made in Wyoming came in the 1880s. The Wyoming Cigar Factory in Cheyenne in 1886 advertised its popular “Opera Bouquet” brand. The company promised “country orders filled promptly.” By 1892, the Wyoming Cigar Factory had changed owners and competition had sprung up across the street. The Cheyenne Cigar Factory, operated by Frank Boehm, competed with “all kinds of cigars at reasonable prices.”
Meanwhile, two cigar factories operated in Laramie. The Evans and Lovett firm advertised: “We manufacture our own cigars and employ union labor.” Their hopes for an increased share of the market were spelled out in the advertisement. “If we can sell one half of cigars that are consumed in Laramie, it means the employment of 50 skilled mechanics in our city.”
Although one of Cheyenne’s manufacturers, the Wyoming Cigar Factory, went out of business about 1900, another company came on the scene and, in 1910, opened the “Havana-Key West Cigar Factory” in Cheyenne. By that time, more than 40 stores in the city sold stogies of all types.
By 1910, Sheridan had three makers, one still operating as late as 1939. Even Rock Springs and Thermopolis boasted two cigar factories each in 1910.
In the period from the turn of the century to World War I, cigar factories operated in many towns.
Rock Springs smokers had a choice between the brand made by John Love, Jr., or the Cuba Vita Cigar Company’s product. Cigar aficionados in Thermopolis ha a choice between two local makers, while residents of Laramie, Casper, Kemmerer, Lander, Rawlins and Hudson could buy hometown products from local makers.
An experienced maker could turn out from 200 to 250 cigars in a day from the raw product shipped in from the southeast, often in 200-lb. bales. (There is no record of Wyoming-grown tobacco).
Many of the shops in Wyoming and elsewhere hired union workers. In fact, the cigar makers union became one of the most powerful in the labor movement. Samuel Gompers, a founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), was a cigar maker by trade. Consequently, wages were excellent and employment was easy to obtain because it seemed that every town had a cigar factory. The so-called “smoke-filled” room where political insiders chose candidates in those days was named for the blue clouds of cigar smoke then associated with many politicians.
The small cigar factories’ heyday came to an end about the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s. “Factories” employing hand-makers could not compete with machines operated by only one worker who could turn out thousands of cigars in a day.
It was not just automation. Cigar smoking itself went into a steep decline (much to the relief of many elevator users and office workers). The once unfashionable cigarette, not sold ready-made until 1905 in many places like Fort Bridger, for instance, made great inroads on the “gentlemen’s smoke.”
Three cigar operations hung on in 1940—one each in Sheridan, Laramie and Hudson. They, too, closed by the end of the decade. Much to the relief of those bothered by the thick clouds of blue smoke—cigars, thankfully, had gone out of fashion. If you wanted an “Opera Bouquet” or any other cigar after that, you had to be satisfied with machine-made cigars, mass-produced far from the high plains of Wyoming
Many towns in Wyoming in recent years have adopted smoking bans in public places. The bans apply to cigarettes primarily, but also to the much less common cigars. It’s quite a change from frontier times when many Wyoming communities boasted cigar factories. It took more than another half century for the same fate to befall its smaller cousin, the cigarette.