JOHNSON HOTEL - 1955

UPDATED APRIL 2024

Laramie Fire Chief Blake Fanning surveys charred lobby 

A March 15, 1955 fire at the Johnson Hotel in Laramie, Wyoming, claimed seven lives - including a retired rodeo rider who performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.

"The stairs were a sheet of flame," survivor Alfred Warner said. "I climbed out the window and hung onto the hotel sign."

The blaze - blamed on a cigarette - started behind the lobby on the main floor of the two-story hotel at 103 Grand St., where 26 guest were bunking for the night. The building was 55 years old, with 36 rooms and a cafe.

Six victims died at the scene, and the Associated Press reported the seventh died March 19 at Laramie's Ivinson Memorial Hospital.

The fire started at about 2:30 a.m. and the last flame was extinguished at 5:30 am., the United Press reported. The hotel register was destroyed in the fire, delaying identification of the victims, UP said.

Fire Chief Blake Fanning told the Laramie Boomerang newspaper:

"When we arrived smokes was pouring out all the front windows of the building and men were leaning from the windows, hanging from the two signs at the front and shouting from the roof of the adjoining building.

"The heat was so terrific we couldn't get in the upstairs and we couldn't reach the inside rooms where we could hear men yelling."

Among the dead was retired rodeo rider Ed "Boots" Smith, who toured Europe in the early 1900s as a member of the Buffalo Bill Cody and Gandy Brothers Wild West shows, according to a wire service report.