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PrintAces in the Hole
Jackson lost its bid for legalized gambling,but staked a few winning memories
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“I can’t believe I came to Jackson Hole in a Mercedes, and I’m leaving in a bus,” one tourist lamented in the early 1950s. Her vehicle hadn’t broken down. It hadn’t even been stolen. She’d gambled her car away, she confided to local business owner and horseman Bill Scott, and her only option for getting home was on a bus.
From saloons to mining camps, with bets placed by legends like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, gambling was an integral part of life in the West’s wild days, and Jackson Hole was no exception. Though 1901 legislation prohibited gambling in Wyoming, it still existed and even flourished in the early half of the 20th century in towns all over the state, including Pinedale, Casper, Laramie and Sheridan. Aside from infrequent raids, the authorities largely overlooked the illicit pastime in Jackson, until it got too big to ignore in the early 1950s.
At midcentury, Jackson looked and felt much different than today, of course. With the exception of the highway, the streets were all dirt, cowboys and dudes alike used silver dollars rather than paper money, bar fights were an accepted and common way of letting off steam, and every once in a while someone actually rode a horse into a bar.
Customers tested their luck at slot machines in the gas stations and even in one of the pharmacies, Lumley’s Drug. At the local bars—referred to as the “joints”—patrons watched roulette wheels spin with anticipation, hoped for good hands playing blackjack and poker, and rolled the dice at the craps tables, dreaming of newfound fortunes. Along with gambling, these establishments—Tuttle’s, Joe Ruby’s, The Frontier Saloon, the Cowboy Bar, the Log Cabin Saloon, and The Wort Hotel—offered locals and out-of-towners a place to drink, hear live music, and dance.
Joe Ruby’s and The Frontier Saloon were accustomed to being the only local watering holes in the 1920s, but they faced lively competition in the ’30s with the opening of the Log Cabin Saloon. An establishment unrelated to today’s Log Cabin Saloon [“today’s” Log Cabin is gone now, too–Ed.], it was situated on the southwest corner of the Town Square. Jack Huyler, Jackson storyteller and historian, immortalized the Log Cabin in his book and That’s the Way It Was…in Jackson’s Hole. “The Log Cabin instantly became the place to go; and we did,” he writes. “A huge bar ran the length of the big front room. The equally large back room was for gambling and dancing.”
