Root's Opera House Scrapbook, 1906-1916

Chauncey Root and his sister-in-law, Helen Elizabeth Haley Root, operated Root's Opera House from about 1894 to about 1929. The Opera House, as it was known, was the first established theatre in Laramie, Wyoming. It was located at 211 S. 3rd Street. Mrs. Root and her husband, William Root, operated a simple theater at that same location sometime during the 1880s. It was known as Blackburn Hall, and it may have served as a community hall. The Roots purchased the building from the Albany County School District in the late 1870s when the school district abandoned Laramie's first school building, which was constructed in 1872. The Roots were involved in several business ventures on this site (211, 213, and 215 S. 3rd Street) including a Studebaker farm implement sales shop, a wagon repair shop, and a wild game headquarters where game was collected and shipped to Europe. By the late 1890s, the Roots had fully converted the building as a theatre and began improving it. It had electricity, a large stage, fine dressing rooms, and plush seating for 650 people. It was considered to be among the finest theatres between Kansas City and San Francisco. The Roots were able to attract some of the most popular plays, finest actors and repertoire companies, musical comedies, and international singers of the time. In the 1920s, when motion picture shows became popular and stage-acting began to decline, a movie projector and picture screen were installed. By 1930 the theatre had closed, at which time Chauncey Root began operating a newsstand out of the theatre lobby. The building was razed in 1936.

Members of the Root family came to Laramie after the father, Aaron Root, arrived in the city as a construction worker with the Union Pacific Railroad about the time Laramie was established in 1868. Chauncey Root worked as a clerk at Edward Ivinson's bank until 1882 before he involved himself in the various family businesses. Chauncey Root died in Laramie on June 13, 1938. Helen Root died in Laramie on June 6, 1927, and William Root died in 1903.