"Wet" Enterprise: Selected Saloons of the Old West

The setting is the Blackfeet Indian Reservation located in  Montana east of Glacier National Park and bordering Canada, an area larger than the state of Delaware.    There Thomas Patrick McGovern, an immigrant from Northern Ireland and saloonkeeper, fell in love with Sophie Gill Longevin, a half-Indian girl just out of her teens, and they wed. The couple is shown above. Often such marriages ended badly, but the McGoverns’ union lasted until Tom’s death, still living among the Blackfeet.   McGovern was born in July 1863, likely in County Cavan.  Of his early years the records are silent, nor is it clear when he immigrated to the United States and settled in a small Montana town called Dupuyer.  This hamlet drew French fur trappers, sheep ranchers from England and Scotland, and a motley group of adventurers.  As one observer put it:   “The settlement was typically wild and unruly, as were most western towns.” There in the 18...

          Milton Edward Joyce, proprietor of the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, has been called “one tough old bird” and, as above, pictured as a mean-eyed Western gunslinger.  Most often cited is Joyce’s violent clash in 1888 with the notorious “Doc” Holliday.  “…That’s just one small slice of this remarkable man’s life”  argues one observer, noting that the characterization ignores Joyce’s civic and business contributions.  Both depictions are valid.  There were two sides to Milton Joyce. Born in New York in 1847, Joyce arrived in California in 1862  at the age of fifteen. He was recorded in the 1870 Census working as a blacksmith in San Mateo, California, twenty miles from San Francisco.    By 1880 he had moved to Cochese County, Arizona, when silver was discovered there, initially recorded as a miner living in Tombstone.    Founded in 1879 this boomtown quickly attracted a mix of t...