25 Things Saloons ACTUALLY Had in the Old West (Hollywood Got It Wrong)

In gold rush San Francisco, a bartender named Jerry Thomas set whiskey on fire and poured it from one silver mug to another in a long blue arc of flame. He called it the Blue Blazer. Fifty years later, on the night of July 14, 1900, Prescott, Arizona was burning, and the men drinking in the Palace Saloon picked up the bar and carried it across the street. Then they kept drinking. The real Wild West saloon was stranger than the one in the movies. It was a tent with a plank across two barrels. It had a brass scale for gold dust, tokens instead of change, a free lunch, a brewery's name over the door and sometimes a judge holding court at the bar. These are twenty-five things it actually had, each one taken from a newspaper, a diary, a city ordinance, a photograph or an archaeological dig. Where a story is only a story, I say so. Chapters 0:00 The bar that crossed the street 0:52 25. A tent and a plank 2:20 24. Lightning from Taos 3:48 23. A little brass scale 5:03 22. A bartender with big hands 6:04 21. A pocket full of brass tokens 7:55 20. Whiskey made in the back room 8:50 19. A free lunch 9:37 18. A man who could set whiskey on fire 10:47 17. A brewery's name over the door 12:00 16. Two kinds of room 12:46 15. A machine beside the register 13:57 14. A cash register with a bell 15:06 13. A sign about your guns 17:30 12. A chair nobody wanted 18:30 11. A faro bank with a lawman dealing in it 19:56 10. A ticket for a dance 21:23 9. A saloon three miles from the fort 22:57 8. A Tabasco bottle 24:20 7. Curtained boxes upstairs 25:19 6. A courtroom 25:54 5. A back bar ordered from a catalog 27:14 4. A sign that said Sample Room 28:27 3. A painting of Cleopatra 30:05 2. Three women, and a war 31:56 1. A bar with legs #WildWest #OldWest #Saloon