When it became known that a Justice of the Peace was wanted for the area, Roy Bean was quick to volunteer and on August 2, 1882, he became the "legal authority" in the area. He first operated his "justice" out of his tent saloon in Vinegarroon, another railroad camp to the south.

As the vast majority of railroad workers moved to Langtry, so did Judge Roy Bean. There, he quickly set up another tent saloon on railroad land, to the chagrin of Cezario Torres who owned most of the land beside the railroad right-of-way.

By 1883, he had built a wooden structure for his saloon, which he called the "Jersey Lilly," after the well-known British stage actress Lillie Langtry. Her real last name was actually Emilie Le Breton and she was not related to George Langtry. Bean used the saloon as his headquarters courtroom, calling himself the "Law West of the Pecos."

Cezario Torres, one of the original commissioners of what was then Pecos County, tried unsuccessfully to keep Bean out, which began a long-running rivalry between Bean and Torres's son Jesús. Despite the Torres family objections, Bean's establishment was an immediate success and though his actions as a judge were often eccentric, they were generally sound for the frontier town.