Saloons, Women & Gambling (original) (raw)

VIEWER WARNING: Some historic photos under Saloon Style women contain nudity.

Saloons, Women & Gambling

When America began its movement into the vast West, the saloon was right behind, or more likely, ever present. Though places like Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico already held a few Mexican cantinas, they were far and few between until the many saloons of the West began to sprout up wherever the pioneers established a settlement or where trails crossed.

Saloons were ever popular in a place filled with soldiers, which included one of the West's first saloons at Bent’s Fort, Colorado in the late 1820s; or with cowboys, such as Dodge City, Kansas; and wherever miners scrabbled along rocks or canyons in search of their fortunes. When gold was discovered near Santa Barbara, California in 1848, the settlement had but one cantina. However, just a few short years later, the town boasted more than thirty saloons. In 1883, Livingston, Montana, though it had only 3,000 residents had 33 saloons.