"Wet" Enterprise: Selected Saloons of the Old West

Wyatt Earp’s “North to Alaska” Saloon   No Western figure has more engendered more written words than Wyatt Earp.    As a  result, trying to cover his colorful career in a single post is impossible.    Accordingly, this vignette focuses on Earp during the four years he operated a popular saloon in Nome, Alaska, far from Tombstone, Arizona and the gunfight at the OK Corral for which the gunslinger, shown here, is best remembered. Indeed, some have speculated that it was the aftermath of the October 1881 shootout that sent him “north to Alaska,” when he and his brothers were accused of murder.    A better explanation is provided by Western historian John Boessenecker:     “ For his entire life was a gamble, an effort to make money without working hard for it, to succeed quickly without ever settling in for the long haul.”     As Earp himself is quoted saying that he came to Nome “to mine the miners.” After gunfights in ...

  The Tragic Passion of J.W. Cornell   The letterhead above for James W. Cornell, introduces a successful saloonkeeper and liquor dealer of Cascade, Montana, whose unrequited love for a “soiled dove” at a brothel in nearby Butte led to a tragic end for the principals and shattered lives for others involved.     Born in 1864 in Susanville, California, a town close to the Nevada border, James    was the son of Harriet Maston and Heriro Keneda Cornell.    Know as “Iro,” James’ father presumably was of mixed Japanese parentage, born in New York.    Iro was a farmer and for one period postmaster of    Clear Lake, California.    Mother Harriet had come from Ohio.    The couple produced a family of six children in ten years, one of whom died in infancy.    James was the third in line.    He presumably was given the standard education of the times, ending about the age of 16. Cornell first shows ...