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HERE.
When America
began its movement into the vast
West,
the saloon
was right behind, or more likely, ever present. Though places like
Taos and
Santa Fe,
New Mexico
already held a few Mexican cantinas, they were far and few between until
the many
saloons of the
West began to sprout up wherever
the pioneers established a settlement or where trails crossed.
The first place that was actually called
a "saloon"
was at Brown's Hole near the
Wyoming
-Colorado-
Utah
border. Established in 1822, Brown's
Saloon
catered to the many trappers during the heavy fur trading days.
Saloons were ever popular in a place
filled with soldiers, which
included one of the
West's
first saloons
at Bent’s Fort,
Colorado in the late 1820s; or with
cowboys,
such as Dodge
City,
Kansas; and wherever miners scrabbled along rocks or canyons in search
of their fortunes. When gold was discovered near Santa Barbara,
California
in 1848, the settlement had but one cantina. However, just a few
short years later, the town boasted more than thirty
saloons. In
1883, Livingston,
Montana,
though it had only 3,000 residents had 33 saloons.
Return to Old
West Saloons
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