The Late, Great Cheyenne Saloon and Opera House

Last spring I visited Milan, Ohio, a town best known as the birthplace of Thomas Edison. Milan is a few miles south of Lake Erie and was a boomtown during the early 19th Century. Private investors and the state government poured stacks of money into building a canal from Milan to the lake, creating a regional port that connected New York City to Cleveland and the Ohio region. For 15 years, Milan was among the busiest ports on the Great Lakes. But by the 1850s, it was all over – railroads took away Milan’s strategic advantages, and within a few years, Milan returned to being the sleepy village it is today.

While I was touring Milan, I kept thinking of the all-but-deceased Cheyenne Saloon and Opera House at Church Street Station in downtown Orlando. You may remember the Cheyenne from the early days of The Nashville Network – back when it was a country version of MTV, rather than the generic “TNN” cable provider it is today. The Cheyenne was the set for the “Church Street Station” program, drawing top name performers for televised concerts. The Cheyenne was a linchpin in the Church Street Station development, which provided nightlife to attract the adults visiting Disneyworld and Universal Studios.

In January, on a Saturday night honky-tonk tour of Orlando with my buddy Loretta Lynn (no, not the singer; a writer who lives in Orlando), we dropped in on the Cheyenne. We’d just left Cowboys (www.cowboysorlando.com) a few miles away on the Orange Blossom Trail, where a younger crowd of two-steppers and partiers stretched far into the parking lot, hoping to gain entrance. But at the Cheyenne, we found less than 20 people hanging out at the bar, listening to the rock cover band. During their frequent breaks, 1980s music videos like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” drew a couple of dancers to the tiny dance floor. But mostly, people downed their drinks and moved on to the crowded hip-hop bar around the corner.

It was a sad sight. I remember the Cheyenne from the TV shows, and the days when the lines to get inside stretched around the building. The building has a unique feeling: dark black wood and glass on all the walls, heavy wooden chairs and tables, all lending majesty truly reminiscent of a classic opera house. And at almost midnight on a Saturday night, it was virtually deserted. We didn’t even have a drink – it was too depressing to be there, so we moved on to brighter surroundings.

A few weeks later, I was not surprised to read that the Cheyenne was closing down to the public. The owner plans to rent it out for events, but its days as a dance hall and honky tonk and live music venue are pretty much over.

What happened? Like Milan, Ohio, the Cheyenne was bypassed by changing times. The big tourist attractions decided to offer more than children’s entertainment: Downtown Disney and University’s City Place offered nightclubs and adult diversions, keeping their traffic in Kissimmee and the suburbs. Other clubs in Orlando still do well – Cowboys, for example – but the Cheyenne just couldn’t figure out how to draw a crowd anymore.

And now, it’s the latest in the long list of great Southern honky tonks who have gone by the wayside.