"Wet" Enterprise: Selected Saloons of the Old West

“Con” Oram Punched His Way to Montana Fame A saloon owner known widely as “Con” Oram gained national fame for his 185-round, semi-bare knuckles prize fight in Virginia City, Montana, against a man who outweighed him by 52 pounds.    Proving he was more than a pugilist, Oram, shown here, also has been credited by historians with advancing Montana toward statehood. John Condle Oram was born in 1835 and reared in Ft. Finley (now just Findlay), Ohio.   Originally from Maryland, his father was a blacksmith and a noted wrestler.  He taught his son both skills.  When he was about 20 years old and working in his father’s shop, Con decided to tour the West as a wrestler, challenging the locals for money.  Along the line he also picked up boxing skills. By 1861, he had accrued sufficient winnings to open a blacksmith’s shop in Denver, Colorado.  Business proved to be brisk and soon he was able to hire several assistants allowing him, he said later, “earn money very fast

“Mose” Littleton: A Life in Full Measure                     Working from the premise that every bottle “has a story,” the whiskey jug at left provides a pathway into the story of Moses Luna “Mose” Littleton, a man who began life without formal education in Tennessee, struggled in the whiskey trade in Texas, learned the law in New York City, and eventually became Assistant District Attorney of Dallas. Mose was born in 1864 in one room log cabin in hardscabble mountainous Roane County, Tennessee, below.  At the time his father was serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, a lieutenant in the First Tennessee Voluntary Infantry.  Although much of the state was secessionist, Thomas Jefferson Littleton originally was from Indiana and did not own slaves.  Shown here, he served for four years and survived hot combat from the Battle of Mill Springs to the Siege of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. With the end of the fighting, Lt. Littleton returned to h