Saloon

About the Company

A Western saloon is a kind of bar particular to the Old West. Saloons served customers such as fur trappers, cowboys, soldiers, lumberjacks, businessmen, lawmen, outlaws, miners, and gamblers. A saloon might also be known as a “watering trough, bughouse, shebang, cantina, grogshop, and gin mill”. The first saloon was established at Brown’s Hole, Wyoming, in 1822, to serve fur trappers.[citation needed]

By 1880, the growth of saloons was in full swing. In Leavenworth, Kansas, there were “about 150 saloons and four wholesale liquor houses”.[1] Some saloons in the Old West were little more than casinos, brothels, and opium dens.

The word saloon originated as an alternative form of salon, “Meaning ‘large hall in a public place for entertainment, etc.'” In the United States it evolved into its present meaning by 1841.[2]

Saloons in the U.S. began to have a close association with breweries in the early 1880s. With a growing overcapacity, breweries began to adopt the British “tied-house” system of control where they owned saloons outright. Schlitz Brewing Company and a few others built elaborate saloons to attract customers and advertise their beers.[3]

Politicians also frequented local saloons because of the adaptable social nature of their business.

Temperance illustration of drunkard hitting his wife
Beginning in 1893, the Anti-Saloon League began protesting against American saloons. In 1895 it became a national organization and quickly rose to become the most powerful prohibition lobby in America, pushing aside its older competitors the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party. The League lobbied at all levels of government for legislation to prohibit the manufacture or import of spirits, beer and wine. Ministers had launched several efforts to close Arizona saloons after the 1906 creation of League chapters in Yuma, Tucson, and Phoenix. League members pressured local police to take licenses from establishments that violated closing hours or served women and minors, and they provided witnesses to testify about these violations. Its triumph was nationwide prohibition locked into the Constitution with passage of the 18th Amendment in 1920. It was decisively defeated when prohibition was repealed in 1933.