An Outlaw & 5 At the Maverick Saloon
Over its decades-long existence the Maverick Saloon could count six proprietors, five of them apparently law-abiding Montana citizens. But my guess is that when patrons gathered around the bar at that legendary “watering hole,” the owner about whom the stories were spun endlessly was the Outlaw Lonnie Curry. In the late 1890s the saloon, shown above, was constructed in Harlem, a town in Blaine County, Northeast Montana, located on the Milk River and adjacent to the Canadian border. The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation is just outside its lim its. A postcard of Harlem's main street, unpaved and rutted, indicates the rustic pioneer nature of the town. The man who built the saloon was George Bowles, a transplanted Kentuckian who had fought for the Union in the Civil War. He went west initially as a stage coach driver and became a rancher. Bowles was operating the drinking establishment under the name Club Saloon when in July 1899, Lorenzo Dow Logan, ak