What Were Wild West Saloons ACTUALLY Like?
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- čas přidán 4. 06. 2024
- No matter your knowledge of the wild west or experiences traveling around the western frontier, exploring ghost towns and abandoned settlements, one thing is for certain: When someone mentions the word “saloon,” you can close your eyes and picture exactly what they mean. Saloons play such an important role in our understanding of life in the old west, as they were truly the intersection of so many famous figures, lifestyles, legacies, and overall exciting events of the time period.
While the ideas and imagery of saloons have been reinforced by romantic notions of the wild west era and Hollywood films exaggerating their grandeur, they are historically misunderstood, admittedly like much of the lore we associate with the frontier. Saloons weren’t necessarily the hives of scum and villainy they are portrayed as. While there was certainly the card game gunfights and drunken brawls and town-shaking scandals occurring within the walls of western cantinas, the bloodshed was few and far between.
0:00 Introduction
1:37 Four Posts and a Canvas
8:59 The Golden Years
Music produced by CO.AG: / @co.agmusic
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My great grandparents were given land in Northern British Columbia during the Yukon Gold Rush in the early 1890s, they were from California (They migrated there from Texas via New York City from Ireland via Wales where they were forced to leave in the late 1790s because of Black Bart Roberts, a family member who was also a scum-sucking, murderous pirate). They were also offered citizenship due to having trade skills, they helped build the town of Dawson Creek where my grandpa was born in 1928, the 13th of 13 kids.
My grandpa's sister Yvonne had albums full of old pics and a few were of some of my family in the town's first saloon, it was basically plywood over an alley or alcove between two houses, food and drinks were served from a kitchen in the back of one of the buildings. There were a couple tables and chairs crammed in, a metal woodstove but no front or back walls, big enough for maybe 10 people if a couple didn't mind standing while they drank. A sign on one of the houses said you could also get a hot bath, homecooked meal and rent a room for the night for $1, which is equal to about $35 in 2024.
Cool Dawson's Creek was a great show!!!! Can't believe your family was like the characters on that!
@@edwardschmitt5710 The show was set in the 1990s, my grandpa's dad was around 10-12 when the family became Canadian citizens in the mid 1890s. That would have made them my great-great grandparents, two greats, I only used one great, oops.
I never watched the show but wasn't the name of the town Cliffside or something?
Wow! What a family history...! Super Awesome!
@@beastman1083 Would have been nice if they discovered some gold up there. My grandpa grew up like the tv show The Waltons, he was like the Elizabeth Walton of his family but the Roberts clan had twice as many kids in a house roughly the same size as the one on tv, ran a carpentry business and had a mule the youngest kids rode to school on and they struggled financially just like the Waltons too.
Sooooo... your Great Grandparents were 100 years old in 1890's then? Were given land AND were relatives of the Captn Black Bart??
WOW! Considering the life expectancy wasn't much over 50-60 yrs your story is almost unbelievable. Unless, you just made up a bunch of Irish lore that your family told you.
I'd tale a closer look? A lot of families tell stories to their kids ... just sayin'
I was told by a history buff that the majority of alcoholic drinks in early saloons were actually flavored drinks, sweet and fruity , shots of whiskey weren’t the only or most popular option.
Sarsaparilla
Interesting and informative. Historians did a very good job presenting actual facts from fiction. Special thanks to the salon owners/customers making this documentary possible
The guy at the table with shirtsleeves and the long beard sure does look authentic with this HUGE WRISTWATCH!
Pardon me but your ignorance is showing. Wristwatches date back to the 16th century.
Or the Mac laptop and the stereo radio on the bar.
Time Traveler!
And he was holding 6 cards, and discarded 3.
Or the chrome squared metal frame chair.
The 3 legged dog limps up to the saloon, and slams open the batwing doors, growling: "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw! Thats okay. I'll show myself out.
Was his name Tripod?
@ChatGPT1111 You knew Stumpy McTripod?
😂😂
Can you imagine waking up in a saloon on a Sunday morning back then, hung over, and you just see a bunch of old ladies and a precher looking at you with a concerned look lol.
Either they wouldn't set foot in the bar or they would bodily haul your hung over butter and plunk you down in the first pew to be forced to listen to a over long preaching at the top of the lungs of the entire congregation. ( and yes the exits would be barred by bodies even to the outhouse)
Still happens to me!
Kristofferson knew that feeling.
@@user-oe6wq7pu8dthat's just complete fiction.
As a history teacher i must say you did a great job. The only thing I feel you missed was explaining that everyone drank alcohol cause water was so dangerous at tge time. No big deal but i always found students were fascinated with this fact. Great job explaining the truth about the buildings as well.
I guess there was also a lot of low alcohol content beer and wine back then for that reason
@@Gertieness yes indeed. At same time also very dangerous due to having no clue how much alcohol was in the drink or any of the other chemicals people exchanged in the drink to make more money
Great point to mention there. Thank you, I always liked most of my history teachers. Most of em anyway, there were disagreements with some for sure! Lol
The blessing and the curse of monks and friars, fermenting fruit and grain was truly a distinctive turning point and/or downfall, for many civilizations.
@@erictroxell715 and how much of whatever else; i read tobacco juice was added for some 'flavor' , too (lol maybe i 'read' it here a previous time)
Throughout History the movers and shakers and decision makers were half in the bag.
One of Our towns (Prescott AZ) bars The Palace burnt down. During the fire the patrons dragged the actual bar out of the building and across the street to the park. They set up the bar and continued to drink while the whole block burned down. Where do we now set off the towns fireworks ?
Of course off of the roof of the rebuilt Palace Saloon. As soon as I learned that story I knew I was in the right place.
An incredible story! Thanks for sharing, Mark.
Thank you. This was an excellent video. It was good to hear the real history instead of the fiction we see in movies.
GREAT VIDEO SIR,IN THE LATE 50S SOME PARTS OF THE LITTLE SOUTHERN TOWN WHERE I GREW UP ,HAD A FEW PLACES LIKE THE LATER SALOONS IN YOUR VIDEO.THEY WERE FULL OF OLD MEN DRINKING TO TIMES LONG GONE.TAKE CARE
Trust me... here in Texas...in 2024... that's still happening... just a different generation
While digging a plumbing ditch behind where an old Missouri Saloon stood, i found pieces of burnt wood, small burlap & leather bags bags, bits of dried veggies, many bones of cattle, pigs, chickens, bear? Yes builder sent them to local university. Seems like the drinkers built a cook-fire behind the old bar.If you added a bit of groceries to the "stew-pot" you didn't leave half drunk & starving for a bite to eat.
I think we can all agree that hard liquor and handguns are the perfect combination.
I can't aim for shit if I've been drinking.
Ever since dead-eye was invented, it’s been all about charming banter because it’s a given that anyone IS going to be shot at least once per sitting
and something is mentally wrong with your way of thinking.
atf should be the name of a convenience market
Still works in the US today! 😅
i just love that you can go to one spot and get a beer, get a meal, get a room for the night, get a new job or even vote for your new mayor lmao
Thank you for the videos buddy, learned a lot that I didn't know or was misinformed about!! Keep up the great work
Thank you for the kind remarks! Stay tuned, we've got plenty more coming.
The "Wild West" wasn't actually all that wild. The impressions we have today are formed by the genre of western movies. My ancestors moved west starting in 1840, and none of them died by violence. The western saloon was more like what you'd picture as a modern day neighborhood dive bar. Violent things happened, but it wasn't every day. That impression is the influence of modern day movies, highlighting the most interesting stories to make a movie.
It depends on the city in question, really. There were some mining towns or cities that were absolute nightmares to live in back then. There was constant crime, murders, drunken fights, etc. It wasn't only a TV western depiction, it was very real if you do the research. That doesn't mean that the majority of towns were the same though.
I was surprised at how small Wild West saloons are. Like the bird cage for example. So small!
If some dude came into one of these real places dressed up like Roy Rogers or some other 20th century tv/movie cowboy dude, he'd have been stared and laughed at unmercifully. They wouldn't know what to make of it.
…just like Marty McFly in Back to the Future 3 was
What always gets me about Hollywood westerns is how beautiful the women are and how well kept they were in westerns .. in reality that's absolutely BS. ..
No shit, genius
@@markwolfshohl6562 having bad day or are you always just an A** H***
Nothing like a dog faced prostitute from 1887 after a few cups of gut rot whisky.
Well son, a movie has to use a beautiful actress to play a saloon girl, so that she’ll look as good to you as a real saloon girl looked to a cowboy who’d been out on the range for months.
Bess streeter Aldrich wrote a lantern in her hand about women who went against the rough & nasty stereotype
Outstanding presentation and Thanks.
Another deep dive on the history of our nation. I enjoy your content greatly 💪
Really well done ! ! Very informative. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Funny, Hollywood movies are never accurate history lessons, but more than any other historical movies, we all love to pick apart western movies and shows. A lot of trumped up wild west mythology also originally came from east coast authors who never set foot in the west. Good video.
And the saloon girls were just cocktail waitresses saving up enough money to provide a dowry to the church so they could enter the local convent.
They are not supposed to be accurate. They are supposed to be entertaining 😊
Very interesting, enjoyed that, subscribed.
We appreciate it! Welcome aboard.
Very good video. Thanks.
I've read that a reporter asked Wyatt Earp why town meetings in Tombstone seemed to be held in saloons. Wyatt replied "there weren't alot of YMCA's in Tombstone at that time".
We have our homestead in a ghost town of Freeland CO, 9400ft in altitude,was just a simple mining town, however mining in better climate was found, we quickly faded away, except for a few of us, and we all mainly have animal rescues of sorts. We actually got the woodstove from the old saloon/general store.. thanks for the video and taking some of the Hollywood out of our history, here in the wild west, and I assure you, it definitely was rough up here and by rougher folks,alot of unmarked graves up in the mountains. All the best .
Thank you for sharing your story! We love hearing from folks who still live on the frontier even into the modern age. It's like living amongst fossilized memories.
@@footprintsofthefrontier absolutely is, I'm surrounded by old mines dug by hand, in the craziest terrain. We are completely self sufficient with solar and wind power, back up generators of course. But you can always feel the presence at night looking across the snow valleys and the old workings, just shadows of the past. Thanks again
I would never have drank the whiskey back then. Saloon owners would dilute it with turpentine or embalming fluid. That's why they called it Tarantula Juice, Rotgut or Coffin Varnish.
So, one would expect that the local undertaker was kept very busy? And likely had a deal with the saloon owner?
You woulda been too dumb to know 😂
Nice and informative video.
Little Big Man (the film) has my favorite movie saloon scenes. The book also features the original type of frontier saloon, a tent or awning with a stove and a big barrel of rotgut or fire water for the "Injuns" or indigenous peoples, also for the poorer people, and in the mining areas they had some bottled likker fer them as could pay fer it.
Lol, the ladies with the poster “Lips that touch liquor shall not touch ours”.
I would chose liquor over their lips zero regrets.
Not really any beauties and few seem to have a foot in the grave already at time of taking the picture.
I was in a very small town once,(I won't say where), and there is still an operative old west saloon there. Un believable. It still had a wooden floor that had walking areas worn into it.
The ghost of Aeneas Coffey just smiles…
This was awesome.
I often wonder about the troubadours and the traveling piano players that kept the music going in the saloons. I'm sure there were hundreds of unknown players with thousands of great unknown songs that were never recorded. I'm sure blues was plays before the civil war all the early music in this country the folk music and rock and blues came from the Scott Irish people.
Josey Wales came close to depiction of a drinking establishment
HBO’s ‘Deadwood’ is a good representation. ‘The Gem Saloon’ operated by Albert Swearengen was accurately portrayed for the year of 1876.😎
"Overall. exciting events." I dunno. It was the dime novels that glamorized the West starting in the 1850s. They used a few rare moments to make it all seem like they happened all the time. But my impression from reading is that saloons were mostly routine escapes for smelly cowfolk and visitors passing through. As routine as it would be today.
Gentle correction: turpentine is pronounced tur pen t long I me as in a time of a fork not teen n faro is pronounced pharaoh as in Egyptian pharaoh or fair o. Sorry!!
good documentary some like yourself put a lot time into these & it shows
Thank you! We really appreciate those sentiments.
jack london describes Johnny Hieneholds Last Chance Saloon in one of his books .This was on Oakland waterfront ,interesting eha! ttfn&ty
It’s still there.
Good job keep it up
Great stuff.
I've been to Bodie, California a couple of times and the saloon there is awesome!
The cues are still on the pool table!
I also live in Longmont, Colorado, now where we have the Dickens Opera House which was built in 1881 for (I think) the cousin of Charles Dickens. It too has an awesome bar but has been renovated many times over the years with the exception of the main structure and the bar itself.
Lots of ghost stories about that place!
Remember hurricane Charley's? It was a converted church
@@charlespeterson348 The crank capital of Boulder County?
It sure was...!
Excellent history lesson
drinks with names like "tanglefoot and tarantula juice" lol there is even a beer called "tanglefoot" today on tap in english pubs. pretty good it is too. i'd have been well happy with that in the old west
No bar stools. Bars are the height they are cuz they were for standing. Furniture was pretty rare on the frontier.
The last time I was in a bar without bar stools was in Montana in the 1989s. It was obviously a rough place, with a row of passed out customers along one wall. I asked the bartender why there were no seats, and he said it was because patrons just threw them at each other.
Another bar, this time in South Dakota, had bar stools made from large Cottonwood logs with old metal tractor seats nailed to them. Can’t throw them if you can’t pick them up!
@@tedecker3792both cheap and ingenious!
Plus, every Saturday night, the cowboys in the saloons were breaking balsawood chairs over each others' heads!
@@tedecker3792 LOL! 😆
I got a hearty laugh outta that story.
@ 11:30, is that guy wearing sunglasses? @12:04, 6-year having a drink.
I was always surprised by how small they were!
Thats what she said
Interesting. Great video.
My great great uncle or grandfather was a preacher who did his sermons in a saloon near Golden, Colorado before Coors was there. We still have one of the chairs. Heirloom!!!
What an incredible memento to still have in the family! Thanks for sharing, Caroline.
Fascinating video. Note pee trough at base of bar at 15:40. There is also one in Comstock Saloon in San Francisco. But you better not use it.
Lips that touch liquor !! Love that picture. It came from "Little Me" i think...
"What's your poison?" wasn't just a metaphor. 😮😂
Miners aren’t supposed to drink.
Actually the term shot when ordering a drink 🥃 of whiskey came from the single bullet exchanged for a drink
I am glad to learn why liquor was called firewater.
Dang you got a lot of videos up. CZcams must have been dodging my subscriptions.
old overholt was the most popular whiskey.
Does Danny Gonzalez narrate this?
Wow they were literally serving poison. Yum 😊
At 12:01- Little kid sitting at the table in the saloon... WITH A BEER!!!
Outlawing alcohol worked out really well. Also, we stopped drug use by outlawing it.
So the first saloon out west was in what is present day Dinosaur Colorado?
What people tend to forget is that dangerous stuff happened in saloons.
Prostitution, and poisonous alcohol to name a few.
From the description of the alcohol, it's surprising anyone lived after drinking at a saloon! lol
Wyatt Earp died in 1925. "The Old West" isn´t so old.
Have you been on a NYC subway lately?
1929 actually
25 cents a drink! I cant imagine most people earning more than that an hour.
Thanks for a great vid
My grandparents and parents owned bars in the 50-69-79-80-90-2k0 years and I own one now there’s been 16 shootings 4 murders countless fights and stabbings robbery and my grandpa got shot and shot the man trying to rob him the man lost his life but my grandpa was never the same after he was shot in his stomach and it ruined his insides he even died of infection nearly 25 years after the shooting but his stomach required permanent care and routine surgery’s I hated seeing him suffer like that . My parents were robbed once and they just gave them the money and they left swiftly my bar is very upscale and I take precautions to prevent being robbed so you can’t just walk in my bar you have to be be dressed properly and there’s a cover charge on weekend nights I’ve never even had a fight beyond a shouting match and a punch thrown the main issue I have is dine and dashers they order expensive food and drinks and try to leave without paying . I always catch them and give them the option to pay up or go to jail.
It was a tough life.
Like the star wars reference!
So "Saloons" were like today's....wait for it....BARS!!!!!! Who wudda thunk it!!!!!
Still get pubs like that in Scotland
Someone forgot the laptop on the bar in the opening saloon scene😮
"the local saloon was always lively...."
"And never nasty or obscene."
@7:16-ish... That was one BIG tall guy... Looks like a bunch of "Micks".. But, big boy had to have been a "black Irish" or an "Irish Traveler" like the Fury 'boys'.. Tyson, specifically.. Regardless.. When it came down to fists and fighting that way, he likely had no takers.. When it came down to guns.. Bullets don't care how big or small ye may be, lads.. Or Germans.. Nords, cowboys or Indians.. Gotta say..
Yet the real truth wouldn’t sell tickets to a movie!
Ahahaha, found ya Lenny!
Did you see when that guy picking up a card looked at the one before it picking up (-:> Greg
I wish they still had spitoons on the floor. It would save them from cleaning my spit off the floor at the end of the night...
😂
Saloons were full of saloonatics!
Should've hired James Earl Jones to narrate the video, hoss. You would've surpassed the million views. 🤠🥃🍺 🐎
Pronounced Fayrow!
Fire water = Agüa ardiente. A type of raw alcohol made from the residue of sugarcane process.
P. S. Or of any kind of fruit and grain.
No it's literally not. It's whiskey made from grains. Sugarcane was not something grown in the US.
@@shy404usernotfound . Rum was one of the commodities traded by the British and the Spanish throughout the Caribbean and other parts of the world. That's what was added to the drinking water to make palatable and we get the name for grog. The residue that was left from that production is what it's used to make fire-water. Similar to grappa which is made from the grape residue in wine production.
Ofcourse in lack of sugarcane, then you use corn or barley to make whiskey or scotch and from the mash residue you can get some moonshine or fire-water which is about the same as agüa-ardiente. I forgot what is called in Greece but is something very similar as well.
@@shy404usernotfound . P. S. The Greek fire water is called Ouzo, and it's made from fennel seeds, aniseed and some other stuff.
While I don't think saloons were a non-stop violence pit - your description is simply too refined for a bunch of dirty, exhausted, rough men getting drunk on rot gut. My ex was a patch holder. We would go on cross country runs with his club and others. They are the closest a modern society can be to the rough and ready men of the West. (Except of course for real mountain men ). While they might be peaceful individually, let them drink, play cards and just trade lies and well ... no taking bets on what will occur.
You’re delusional if you think people of the old west were all like asshole bikers.
Liquor in the front, Poker in the rear.
Those pioneers would shit themselves if they saw what a shot of whisky costs these days.
Ah, but you're paying for a product that won't instantly blind you, unlike the raw "whisky" supplied by the pioneer saloons - I cannot believe some of the ingredients!
@@longfadeit’s closer to $20 but yes, 50 cents in 1840 was a LOT of money for a drink.
In the photos no one is packing, another Hollywood myth that everyone carried a Colt.
You might need a Colt on your hip is you were a young kid repairing fences and you knew there were rattlers in the area, but carrying a 6-gun on your hip all the time would have made others suspicious of your intentions whether they knew you or not.
@billolsen4360 ra ch ha ds yes..needed to shoot the horse if you got hung up and dragged.
In cities? .most firearms were concealed
Man..that guy a bit to the left leaning on the bar at 4:38 had enough.
It's that way with all Hollywood actors not just westerns
18:39: holy smokes keep drinking. One would have to be three sheets to the wind to want to touch them lips.👄🤣
Made me think of Charlie Chaplin in the Gold Rush.
That was the film where he "ate his boots", wasn't it?
@@user-oi6ln4eq7b yeah, and he frequented a saloon
great movie!
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
Just for reference.. its pronounced "fair-oh". Great video.
Saloonatics!
"TurpentEEN"? REALLY?
Most of "Hollywood" westerns do a very poor job of accuracy in their depiction of the true "Old West".
Do any of these wild West buildings still exist in America?
Yes
It was funny when the tractor went down to the farm then the cowboy shot an apple
Was that an apple laptop or an apple watch?
@ 12:03: Not only does this show that kids were allowed in saloons, this one even has a little beer mug!
Very interesting. It made me thirsty.