Waylon Jennings is on the jukebox, singing about a good-hearted woman lovin’ her good-timing man as we take a seat at a cherry-wood bar pocked with some of the most infamous cigarette burns in Nevada, United States.
“She never complains of the bad times or bad things he’s done,” Jennings’ honeyed yet wizened purr reverberates beneath a tin ceiling. “She just talks about the good times they’ve had and all the good times to come.”
Bad things, good times – they do the dance here at the Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings.
Evidence of the former is mounted on the wall: “Man killed at Goodsprings”, a framed newspaper story dating to 1915 reads, detailing an infamous shooting in this very bar. A jury acquitted the gunman: “Dead man said to have been drinking.”
Naturally.
The aforementioned cigarette burns tell another grim, well-circulated tale: They were left by actor Clark Gable in 1942 as he awaited the fate of his wife, actress Carole Lombard, who died in a plane crash on nearby Mount Potosi – the room next door doubles as a memorial for the two.
But right about now it’s a shade past 7pm on a Friday, so it’s the good times we’re here to sift from the next few hours, taking our cue from the 3m-tall stone miner out front, his gold pan filled with beer caps.
Embracing the past
As soon as you pass through the weathered, wooden front doors, a sense of history hits you in unison with the aromatic tang of homemade BBQ.
Opened in 1913, this is the oldest bar in southern Nevada. It sits at 310 West Spring Street (state Route 161) in Goodsprings, just west of Jean and about a 35-minute drive south of Vegas along Interstate 15.
As she pours drinks in front of a black-and-white photo of a young girl smoking a cigarette next to a rooster, our server tells us that the bar she places beers upon originated in Rhyolite in the late 1800s – meaning it predates Vegas itself by several decades.
Now, Vegas is a city posited on perpetual evolution – in a good way. To remain an entertainment capital demands consistent reinvention, the showroom’s neon glow begetting the nightclub’s flashing LEDs and so on and so forth.
But there’s a necessary balancing act between eyeing the future and embracing the past, which makes said future possible – and that’s where a place like this comes in, as a counterweight to the eternal pursuit of what’s next.
And so the Pioneer Saloon thrives as an antiquity with a pulse – and by serving up Poltergeist Burgers (the place is ostensibly haunted, see) weighing nearly 500g,
It’s a popular biker hang, though there are no Harley Davidsons parked out back tonight. Instead, a mix of regulars tucked into round wooden tables for supper commingle with 30-somethings sipping mimosas.
Even when bustling, there’s an ease about the room: A guy next to us at the bar sings along to a Chris Stapleton tune like he just can’t help himself. A sheepdog mix scampers around, nosing the stray French fry tossed its way.
Despite the Old West atmosphere, there are plenty of nods to modernity all around us: Enough movies and TV shows have been filmed here to fill a couple of IMDb pages, and a whole corner of the adjacent dining room comes piled high with memorabilia from the hugely popular Fallout: New Vegas videogame – gas masks, action figurines, dented cans of pork and beans, etc – in which the bar was featured, albeit as the Prospector Saloon.
Fallout fans still flock to the Pioneer in an annual pilgrimage of sorts, chronicling their visits in a logbook whose pages are thick with in-jokes: “All this rain really makes you wish for a nuclear winter,” a gamer named Renee wrote.
All this is to say that time doesn’t actually stop at the Pioneer Saloon – it just slows down a little.
And that’s the whole point of coming here: to do the same. – JASON BRACELIN/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service
