Pioneer Saloon takes rightful place
GOODSPRINGS — With its pressed-tin façade, Brunswick cherry wood bar and bullet-riddled walls, the Pioneer Saloon has one foot planted squarely in Old West Nevada.
The other foot is on your liver.
Unlike most historic sites, the Pioneer is always open, and the folks inside will happily serve you a Budweiser or a Bloody Mary at any hour of the day or night.
The 94-year-old watering hole recently was added to the State Register of Historic Places. It now is under consideration for the national register.
The building and the one next to it were built sometime around 1913 by George Fayle, who ordered the structures through the mail, possibly from Sears and Roebuck.
“It’s definitely a kit of some kind,” said Goodsprings resident Monica Beisecker, who researched and wrote the saloon’s application for the state registry.
The original structure remains intact and in use, as does its twin next door, which Fayle originally operated as a cafe but now serves as the town’s general store.
Fayle’s other business ventures in Goodsprings included several mercantiles and mining claims and the elegant Fayle Hotel, which burned to the ground in 1966. He also found time to serve as a Clark County commissioner and as the first postmaster of nearby Jean, which used to be called Goodsprings Junction until he named it for his wife.
Fayle died in 1918, a victim of the great flu pandemic that wiped out half the town and killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. And what the Spanish flu started in Goodsprings, Prohibition finished, Beisecker said.
The national ban on alcohol spelled the end for the half-dozen bars that sprouted up in Goodsprings to lubricate the local mining business. The Pioneer Saloon was the sole survivor.
“They stayed open during the Prohibition by selling quote-unquote soft drinks,” said Terri McBride, who is national and state register coordinator for the State Historic Preservation Office.
The saloon operated continuously until 1954, when it was shut down and boarded up. The place sat vacant until Irene Nutman bought it and opened it back up in 1960.
Six years later, she sold it to Don Hedrick Sr., who presided over some of the bar’s wildest years so far.
Though the Pioneer was the scene of a fatal gunfight over a crooked card game in 1915, the bullet holes in the wall near the wood stove actually came from Hedrick.
Beisecker said she doesn’t think he was shooting at anyone in particular: “I think he was just making holes.”
Hedrick is credited with starting the town’s first ambulance service, which he ran using an old hearse that had been painted white. When someone needed to go to the hospital, Cobb said, “Don Senior” would put the money box on the bar and climb behind the wheel, leaving customers to fetch their own drinks and pay their tabs on the honor system.
Lifelong Goodsprings resident Deanna Rhoades remembers some of those days.
“When I was a little kid, I would peek through the bullet holes to see what was going on in the bar,” she said.
Her husband, Dave, who has lived in Goodsprings for 23 years, said he remembers when there used to be cots in the back for people to sleep it off. The saloon was open only until 11 p.m. back then, so if you were too drunk to go home, you might end up locked inside overnight.
Like many old places in Nevada, the Pioneer Saloon’s biggest claim to fame is rooted in a story that probably isn’t true.
Clark Gable is said to have waited in the bar for word on his wife, Carole Lombard, and her mother, who were among 22 people killed in a plane crash on nearby Mount Potosi.
The saloon now boasts a pair of wrought-iron gates and a memorial wall of photos dedicated to Gable and Lombard, though Beisecker said it seems unlikely that Gable would have waited there when the only two telephones in town at the time were at a private home and in the bar of a hotel down the street.
The only hard evidence Beisecker found to support the story is Gable’s name written on a hotel registry on Jan. 18, 1942, two days after the crash. Lombard’s body had already been recovered by then.
“There’s a lot of folklore about this town. There’s a lot of folklore about this bar,” Beisecker said.
From a historic standpoint, McBride said, the Pioneer is most notable for its construction. “It is entirely enveloped in white-washed, pressed-tin tiles that replicate shaped stone blocks,” she said. “The interior is also adorned with decorative, floral-motif, pressed-tin tiles.”
Beisecker said the tin has held up remarkably well over the years. “The whole town burned down except this building,” she said.
The saloon’s distinctive look has made it a popular backdrop for movie productions and photo shoots. Movie stars Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts spent time there during the making of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “The Mexican.”
Country star Travis Tritt is pictured leaning on the Pioneer’s pool table on the cover of his 2004 album “My Honky Tonk History.”
“He’s a Harley rider; this is a biker bar,” Beisecker explained.
The saloon’s place on the state register was cemented earlier this month with a vote by the Nevada Board of Museums and History, a panel of 11 historians, architects, tourism officials and business leaders.
The historic designation caps what was an otherwise lousy year for the Pioneer.
In April — Friday the 13th, to be exact — a car slammed into the front of the building and took out the porch. Then, two months ago, former owner Don Hedrick Jr. died of cancer.
The most recent blow came earlier this month, when part-time bartender Sandy Edwards died at the age of 67.
Edwards started working at the saloon not long after her husband, Gary, died there about five years ago. Cobb said the 63-year-old regular put his empty mug on the bar and ordered “one more,” then promptly dropped dead by the front door. “He went in his favorite place,” she said.
The only other site in Goodsprings to make the state or national registry is the town’s one-room school house, built in 1913. Beisecker said the still-functioning school has nine students, three staff members and high test scores.
These days, the Pioneer serves as a town square of sorts for many of Goodsprings’ 200 residents.
When a wildfire scorched some 33,600 acres near the town in 2005, the saloon is where locals went for updates. When the town’s power goes out, especially during the winter, people show up at the saloon with lanterns to warm themselves by the wood stove — the same one that has been used to heat the building since it opened.
“We have a community center — in fact, we’ve had two — but it’s not like the bar. The bar really is the gathering place,” Beisecker said.
Deanna Rhoades couldn’t agree more.
“This is the only establishment in town,” she said as she sipped a late-morning Bloody Mary on a recent weekday. “You get kicked out of here, you’re kind of screwed.”
Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0350.
