Whiskey-drinking, Whoring And Wagering

A tenderfoot once observed that Wyatt Earp's most vivid recollections of his days as a frontier lawman involved people who were entering, occupying or leaving saloons. Earp replied tartly, "We had no Y.M.C.A., s.

There were good reasons why the watchful eye of the law was needed in the saloons of the West. Beyond their primary function as purveyors of drink, many of them provided facilities for gambling and for consorting with fast women — activities that frequently sparked gunplay. But the saloon was also a social club, an art gallery of sorts and a haven of relaxation and repartee. One standard joke stemmed from the ritual that called for customers to pour their own drinks from a bottle into a shot glass. If the customer spilled a single drop, the bartender was likely to inquire, "Do you want a towel?" implying that the drinker had wasted enough whiskey to take a bath in it.

Some saloons dispensed rotgut but others, notably in rich mining towns, were stocked with the finest liquors and wines, and could supply almost any mixed drink known to man. At the better establishments Buffalo Bill Cody had no trouble getting his favorite, a Stone Fence: a shot of rye and a twist of lemon in a glass of cider.

Bartenders often were hired not just for their mixing skills but for their ability to handle rowdies. Yet beneath a stern exterior many a barkeep concealed a sentimental heart. "Don't forget to write to mother," read a sign in a Montana saloon. "She is thinking of you. We furnish paper and envelopes free, and have the best whiskey in town."

As towns sprouted in the 19th-century American West — outside Army forts, at river crossings along wagon trails, in mining districts and at railheads — some of the first structures built were recreational facilities. Recreation for the almost totally male population inevitably meant the triple-W vices of the frontier: whiskey-drinking, whoring and wagering.

Saloons, brothels and gambling halls would appear almost overnight. In the early camps, the structure might be only a lantern-lit, dirt-floored tent, the bar simply a board stretched between two whiskey barrels, the prostitution facility just a cot in a wagon bed for the use of a single female strumpet, and the gambling outfit only a rickety table, a few chairs and a greasy, dog-eared deck of cards. As the towns grew and prospered, these primitive facilities were replaced by one-story wooden buildings with false fronts to make them appear even larger. And if the community developed into a city, saloons were housed in imposing brick buildings with ornate bars, huge back-bar mirrors and brilliant chandeliers. Some brothels became elegantly furnished parlor houses with attractive ‘boarders’ managed by madams whose names were famous throughout the West. The best-known sporting men of the West presided over and patronized gambling houses that were often the most impressive and elaborately accoutered structures of the cities.

Luke Short’s cronies, as opposed to his customers, preferred big-stakes poker. There was a clubroom at the White Elephant for such men, who generally traveled the Gamblers’ Circuit from town to town. A particularly big game at the White Elephant in August 1885 featured a ‘Who’s Who’ of Western card sharks — Luke Short, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Charlie Coe and local bad boy Timothy Isaiah Courtright. Masterson’s bankroll alone was $9,000. At the end of the evening, the final hand came down to Coe versus Short. Coe’s four kings beat Short’s full house, and Coe left town with this victory — the sole basis for later claims that he was ‘the most successful and also the most feared gambler of them all.’ Meanwhile, Short’s presence at the White Elephant continued to attract major players like Masterson and Earp whenever they came through north Texas. Little Luke’s reign in Fort Worth as the ‘King of Gamblers’ was cut short early in 1887. A bitter feud with Timothy Courtright, a former city marshal in Fort Worth known locally as ‘Long-haired Jim,’ climaxed in gunfire on the night of February 8. The feud, borne out of a power struggle and personal animosity, fueled by liquor and testosterone, brought Courtright to the foyer of the White Elephant that night in a typical drunken state. Long-haired Jim loudly called Short out, and the unflappable gambler agreed. The two men stepped outside onto the boardwalk, where they exchanged terse words. The next thing anybody knew, gunshots echoed up and down Main Street. When the authorities arrived moments later, the former marshal lay bleeding to death half in and half out of the doorway of a shooting gallery next door to the White Elephant. The day before the shootout, Short had sold the White Elephant gambling concession to Jake Johnson for $1,000, perhaps anticipating having to leave town in a hurry, or perhaps with the idea of providing for his widow should the worst occur. On February 9, a hastily summoned coroner’s inquest called the shooting self-defense, and the town seemed to accept the verdict, with only a few do-gooders calling Short a murderer.

By all accounts, the wildest places in the Wild West were the saloons, and Texas had some of the wildest of the wild. Fort Worth’s White Elephant, site of more than a few gunfights, shady deals and high-stakes games in its day, was plenty wild at times, yet it was also a business model for successful saloon entrepreneurship.

A true Western saloon, such as the White Elephant, was a different critter from any of its nearest kin — the dance house, parlor house or variety theater — even though they were often to be found right next door to each other. The saloon was first and foremost a men-only establishment where drinking and gambling were the main attractions, not retail sex. By contrast, the dance house mixed the sexes, dispensing with any pretense of conventional decorum. Many concerned citizens considered the dance houses the greatest curse to befall their Western towns. The parlor house, or bordello, though, could be worse. A well-stocked bar was usually among its amenities, but not the main attraction. The variety theater was a precursor to vaudeville, encouraging men to drink while they viewed scantily clad women. Among these four Western institutions, only the saloon combined drinking, gambling and male fellowship under one roof. Most gentlemen’s saloons (there were other types, too) would not serve proper ladies and frowned upon the other kind of women hanging around the premises.

The White Elephant name was such a familiar one to Texans in its day that it could have been a franchise. There were White Elephants in San Antonio, El Paso, Denison and Wichita Falls, but none possessed the elegance or refinement of Fort Worth’s White Elephant. The origins of the name are uncertain. By the mid-19th century,’seeing the elephant’ meant having a great adventure, especially in faraway places. However, a ‘white elephant’ could also be a worthless investment. The color white also has a certain racist subtext, too, because frontier saloons tended to be strictly segregated places. For instance, Fort Worth also had an African-American bar called the Black Elephant.

Fort Worth’s White Elephant staked its claim to fame on offering the highest quality gambling and food service anywhere in the Southwest for three decades. It was memorable enough to merit respectful mention in the 1902 memoirs of outlaw-lawman James McIntire and the 1907 recollections of lawman-gambler Bat Masterson. It also won a different type of fame as the site of the famous shootout between Luke Short and Timothy I. Courtright.

The Fort Worth establishment began as a simple eatery, opened by F.A. Borodino in 1884 in the 300 block of Main Street. The food was inferior to that at two nearby places — the Planter’s House and the Commercial Restaurant — and the owner’s profits remained anemic, so the place was seized by attachment. Within a year, the White Elephant reopened as a ‘Saloon and Billiard Parlor’ with a small restaurant attached. The new ownership consisted of Jewish businessmen Gabriel Burgower, Nathaniel Bornstein and Samuel Berliner, who were not accepted by the local business fraternity. None of the new owners ever put down roots in the community, which did not help business either. Traditionally, saloons were home owned and home operated, and an owner was expected to greet customers and mingle with the crowd. Burgower, who was the on-site manager, split his time between the saloon and his more profitable jewelry business two doors up the block. Bornstein ran the eatery competently but without the flair that would later become a hallmark of the White Elephant’s dining room, and Berliner was an absentee partner who also had part interest in San Antonio’s White Elephant Saloon.

Burgower and company ran a modest operation built around a bar, some pool tables and a short-order kitchen. It was scarcely the kind of place calculated to appeal to the’sporting fraternity’ of professional gamblers, nor did it draw the deep-pocketed amateurs. It took less than a year for the Jewish partners to realize they possessed a white elephant in the pejorative sense of the term.

The pedigree of the White Elephant at this time was pure workingman’s saloon. Fort Worth was still a trail town, longing to achieve respectability but proud of its frontier heritage. ‘The Fort,’ as it was sometimes called, was only a little more than 30 years old, dating back to its beginnings as an Army outpost from 1849-1853. By the 1870s it had grown up to become a stopover on the Chisholm Trail, going up to the Kansas railheads. A decade later, it was still wrestling with respectability, reflected most clearly in its public entertainments. On the south end of town, below Eighth Street, the notorious vice district known as ‘Hell’s Half Acre’ still held sway, with its cowboy bars and cribs, wide-open gambling joints and raunchy dance halls. On the north end of town, closer to the public square, legitimate businesses operated alongside gentlemen’s saloons and private clubs. The White Elephant aspired to be among the latter category. Its chief competition came from the El Paso Hotel Bar, which claimed to be ‘the First-class Saloon of the City.’

To put itself in the front ranks of gentlemen’s saloons, the White Elephant would have to build a loyal clientele among the locals and establish a solid reputation beyond the city’s limits. First-class food and bar service and top-of-the-line gambling would help achieve those goals. The White Elephant bragged that it served ‘the best brands of old sour mash whiskeys in the state’ as well as ‘ice cold’ beer. The first was a demonstrable boast; the second was possible only after the Crystal Ice Company began manufacturing the stuff year-round starting in March 1887.

The quality and variety of food, however, is what set the White Elephant apart from the competition. Every saloon offered the traditional ‘free’ bar lunch to customers who bought a 5-cent beer, but the food was typically cold, greasy and heavily salted. The White Elephant’s little kitchen in the back served up a light menu of home-style cooking but not full dinners. There was a seating section for customers who did not want to eat alongside the serious drinkers. The second way the White Elephant aimed to make a name for itself was by providing clubrooms, available to anyone who wanted to rent them for private parties or invitation-only games. Burgower and his associates had an image problem, though. As long as their establishment called itself a Saloon and Billiard Parlor, they could never hope to achieve the saloon equivalent of a five-star rating.

The long paneled counter. The large mirror behind the bar. The brass foot rail for hard-working cowhands to rest their feet on. Patrons taking shots of "firewater." Erwin E. Smith's image Settling the Dust, taken in Old Tascosa, Texas, depicts everything you'd expect in an Old West saloon. But something's missing: Not one of the patrons is carrying a gun. Tascosa Sheriff Caleb Berg "Cape" Willingham banned guns within the city limits in 1880, 27 years before Smith shot the picture.

The cow town, located at a crossing of the Canadian River about 40 miles northwest of what is now Amarillo, was the first established town in the Texas Panhandle. By 1939 the place would become a ghost town and Cal Farley would found the Maverick Club, now the Cal Farley Boys Ranch, where "the hardest place on the frontier" used to lie. In its prime, Tascosa was known as the Cowboy Capital of the Plains, filled with notorious outlaws, fast women, liquor, gambling, and everything that made the West wild. Willingham, a cowman who had worked for Charles Goodnight, became the town's first sheriff; he promptly outlawed firearms in an attempt to tame the settlement.

One fateful day, LS Ranch foreman Fred Leigh rode into town and challenged Willingham by reaching for his six-shooter. Some accounts say the incident began when Leigh shot a duck belonging to one of the town's few "respectable" ladies; others say Leigh called on the sheriff, who had been drinking in the town's oldest saloon, the Equity Bar. Whatever the prompting, Leigh is said to have gone for his gun, and it's a matter of Wild West history how the lawman responded: Willingham drew his sawed-off double-barreled shotgun and blasted the unruly cowboy off his saddle. Leigh was the second man to be buried in Tascosa's Boot Hill Cemetery — so named because, like other "boot hill" burial grounds of Old West gunfighters, its first few occupants died and were buried with their boots still on.

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