Cheyenne Frontier Days: Morning Star American Indian Village
Location: Cheyenne, Wyoming (Frontier Park)
Size: 3.8 Acres
Services: Master Planning, Site Design, Landscape Architecture
Project Overview
For over 130 years, American Indian dancers, musicians, storytellers, and artisans have been an integral heart of Cheyenne Frontier Days. The new Morning Star American Indian Village transforms that long-standing heritage into a state-of-the-art, year-round cultural destination. Expanding the village footprint from 1.2 to 3.8 acres, Tallgrass Landscape Architecture, in close collaboration with Native advisors, Cheyenne Frontier Days Committees, and our project partners (led by Archforma - previously Winters Griffith Architects), re-imagined the venue to honor the living traditions of the Plains tribes who have called these lands home for centuries.
Located just South of the Old West Museum, the redesigned campus balances heavy festival foot traffic during Cheyenne Frontier Days with quiet, reflective spaces suited for year-round educational programming. The result is an inclusive, immersive landscape where history, art, and community meet.
Key Design Highlights
Centerpiece Sunken Dance Arbor: Designed to reflect the traditional circular symbol of unity and family, the central 750-seat sunken dance arbor features tiered, ADA-accessible terraced seating. The arbor provides unobstructed viewlines for some six daily ceremonial dances and drum performances during Frontier Days.
Signature Sculptural Boundary Fence: Encircling the 3.8-acre site is a custom 1,300-foot sculptural metal boundary fence depicting running bison and horses, creating an artistic perimeter that establishes a sense of arrival and sacred boundary.
Permanent Artisan Pavilions: Replacing legacy temporary structures, permanent, weather-protected vendor spaces allow Native artists to showcase and sell authentic beadwork, jewelry, and crafts. These “garage” style booths simplify and secure the daily setup of the merchandise for the vendors.
Multifunctional Cultural Nodes: The site plan incorporates dedicated zones for oral storytelling, traditional flute music, interactive kids' craft stations, and custom-built walk-in tipi exhibits.
Universal Accessibility & Native Planting: Intentionally designed pathways and plaza spaces ensure seamless, barrier-free access throughout the campus, surrounded by resilient regional plantings that tie the site back to the native Wyoming landscape.
Cultural Collaboration & Lasting Impact
Guided by Native cultural advisors and Cheyenne Frontier Days staff, the Morning Star American Indian Village was built as a living tribute—one that elevates the Native presence from a festival event stuck in an out-of-the-way corner to a permanent anchor institution. Designed to transition smoothly from hosting tens of thousands of visitors during Frontier Days to serving school groups and community gatherings off-season, the project strives to represent culturally respectful design - and we still have so much to learn.
Having attended the inaugural year, we couldn’t be happier with how the spaces turned out. This project stretched our design chops with the overlapping site conflicts, restraints, and conditions that required creative solutions for problems that hopefully no one ever imagines are there!
So, pull on your moccasins, and pull down your hat! It’s the Daddy of ‘em all!
Here’s some of the media from the inagural year: