Drinking Wyoming: Drinking Like Butch Cassidy, From Rock Springs To Sheridan

Cowboy State Daily’s 'Drinking Wyoming' is presented by Pine Bluffs Distilling.

Plenty of places in Wyoming lay claim to Butch Cassidy’s being there. He slept here, he robbed a bank here, he hid out here, danced with the ladies here and saved an old lady there. 

But a fun adventure — and obvious tourist marketing ploy that’s so far been sparsely used — is Cassidy drank whiskey here.

Now some historians would have you believe that Cassidy didn’t drink that much, if at all. And it’s true that we don’t know for sure what Cassidy’s drink of choice would have been.

But perhaps those historians are relying a little too much on the description of him from former gal pal, Queen Ann Basset, who claimed in her memoir that she never saw Cassidy “drunk nor wearing a gun — in sight.” 

She also claimed, though, to have no personal knowledge of any deeds of “outlawry” and that Cassidy never lived in Brown’s Park after he was “wanted” by the law. 

That’s despite her sister Josie admitting they helped hide Cassidy after a “rich uncle died”  — a common outlaw euphemism for robbing a bank or train.

Probably, it’s best to take all of Ann Bassett’s assertions with a grain or three of salt. 

In fact, we do know that Cassidy drank — and even got drunk — because he was fined $1 for public intoxication by a Sheridan judge, as reported in the Sheridan Post on Jan. 12, 1893. 

The paper listed one George Cassidy, his alias at the time, as a “common drunk” and listed his fine as $1 and costs.

Cassidy was sandwiched between a gentleman named John Henry (with the notation “colored”) who was fined $15 for aggravated drunk and a man named Orville Hardee who was fined $100 and costs for carrying and firing his gun. The latter was thrown in jail for inability to pay the fine.

Were the three men all part of some drunken row? Hard to know. But it’s not a stretch to imagine irritated lawmen called to deal with a drunken shooter reeling in a couple other bystanders at the same time. 

Drinking With His First Outlaw Partner

The two-line report in 1893 puts Sheridan firmly on the Butch Cassidy’s trail of imbibing, though it’s most certainly neither the start nor the end of this trail, that has yet to be fully fleshed out by historical scholars.

To follow in Cassidy’s outlaw footsteps from start to finish one would have to start in Telluride, Colorado, where Cassidy met his first bank-busting partner, Matt Warner, and bought each other drinks in a saloon. 

The two young men had gone there for horse racing, but when their sure-fire winner became a little too well-known, they needed a lucrative and easy alternative. There were good jobs for hard labor in the nearby mines, but the two felt bank robbing likely suited them better.

To prepare, they sat in the saloon directly across from their target, pretending to drink copiously, while actually nursing their drinks slowly along. 

Were those drinks whiskey? Maybe.

Rum was a common liquor in America and the West at the time, as was beer, wine and hard cider. 

But whiskey was the one liquor more common than any other in the territory that had once been part of Brigham Young’s sprawling Mormon empire, which included parts of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Arizona and California.

A particular kind of whiskey at that. Tan Valley whiskey, made from wheat and supervised, from start to finish, by church elders who reported straight to Young. 

Whiskey was legal for Mormons to drink in Young’s time because it was useful. It could be used to sterilize wounds, a jug of it was easy to barter with, and the doctors of the day believed it would strengthen the heart and improve respiration. 

In fact, beliefs about whiskey’s health benefits persisted past Prohibition, with the American Medical Association publishing 27 ailments that called for a whiskey prescription.

By the time of Cassidy’s birth in Utah in 1866, Brigham Young had stepped back from the spotlight, but he was still the defacto leader of the Morman church for many years and played an active role right up until his death in 1877.

The Case For Whiskey

That makes whiskey a good candidate for a Mormon-born cowboy, over and above the fact it was the most popular liquor in the West, to the point that social mores of the day required a polite host to offer his guest a nip first thing. 

Those who drank whiskey for medical purposes often bought it from a saloon, where they could have it in a cocktail, with things like willow bark tea added to it — sure to remedy the pain of a toothache or other malady, for a while at least.

There are two tales suggestive of whiskey as a likely drink for Cassidy. 

The first involves a man named Christian Heiden, who recounted how Cassidy frequently accompanied him on stagecoach runs from Embar to Meeteetse. Among their stops was the widow Rose Williams’ log cabin, who Heiden said served meals and sometimes whiskey. 

Widow, it seems, was a euphemism of sorts, as other historical records reveal that she was a well-known madame in Lander before moving her cabin of ill repute to a point just north of Meeteetse. 

During their stop at Williams’ cabin, all the good widow had to serve them was some stringy rabbit meat. Whether whiskey was imbibed with this humble repast is not recorded, but after the meal, Cassidy quietly asked Heiden if stringy rabbit meat was the usual fare. 

When Heiden acknowledged it was, that prompted Cassidy to take Heiden on a little hunting trip to procure some proper meat for the widow.

They passed up what were, in Heiden’s estimation, perfectly good shots at buffalo and deer until Cassidy found what he was really seeking — a 2.5-year-old calf. 

“What’s the brand?” Heiden wondered. 

“Never mind about that,” Cassidy said as he shot the calf. “This is what we’re after.”

Cassidy took the calf back to the widow, where one imagines they had a very fine steak dinner — perhaps accompanied by some of the widow’s precious whiskey stash. 

One Wild Stagecoach Ride

Here’s another fun anecdote that makes it clear that Cassidy was no tee-totaler. It’s an 1895 newspaper account based on a story from Charles E. Burnaugh, who had the contract for carrying mail between Fort Washakie and Embar six times a week. 

On one of the occasions, he happened to meet up with Cassidy, Al Hainer and an unnamed man at the Embar Saloon, where the three drank to past, present and future friendships until the trio became “mellow” and reached that point where they “overcame all the ills of life.”

There were clearly no abstainers in this tale. Everyone was feeling the buzz. 

They climbed aboard Burnaugh’s buckboard and started over the mountain, climbing to the apex of Owl Creek Mountain, where there was a glorious view of the great valley of the Wind River Range. 

But, as they started down the steep mountain side above mail camp, the brakes failed.

Burnaugh recounted having a firm grip on the reins and managing the team of horses quite well, until Cassidy or one of his associates decided to fire off a gun, further spooking already nervous horses. 

Burnaugh characterized it as a drunken lark, though one wonders, since another Cassidy associate at the same moment pulled out a knife and cut the reins just below Burnaugh’s handhold.

That left him no real way to control the stagecoach at all anymore. They were in freefall with spooked horses, careening down a steep mountainous pass, with sheer cliff walls and no modern-day guard rails between them and a likely fatal fall.

Burnaugh held on for dear life and no one can know if there was some divine intervention involved in preventing the loss of both his life and stagecoach that day. 

At the end of the ride, Burnaugh notes that they made mail camp safe and sound — much sobered by the event. 

Cassidy Was Always Up For Pranks, Escapades

Anecdotes suggesting Cassidy pranks that sound like drunken escapades stretch across Wyoming, starting in Rock Springs, where Cassidy saved the life of one Douglas A. Preston during a barroom brawl. 

Preston was a famous attorney who would later represent Cassidy and some of his associates. 

In Lander, Cassidy was well-known as a cowboy who was always up for a practical joke. 

Like the time he and some of his “exuberant” fellow spirits hitched four unbroken horses to an old overland stagecoach filled with some “rouged” women, then placed themselves on top of the conveyance wherever they could hang on. 

The stagecoach went careening down Main Street, six-shooters popping off all along the way, as the women inside shrieked, whether from delight or sheer terror is never quite clear. 

Another time, also in Lander, Butch and Hainer borrowed John Lee’s buckboard along with another man named Whitney. They raced down the street, and Cassidy lost control of the stagecoach, which crashed into a hitching rail in front of one Coalter’s Saloon. The team broke free and scattered, while the buckboard was destroyed. 

There’s also the tale in a saloon at Andersonville north of present-day Thermopolis, where Cassidy shot at the floor in front of a sleeping patron named Whiskey Tom. 

When that didn’t startle the man, Cassidy raised his aim a little and accidentally shot Tom in the leg. 

That woke Tom up all right. 

Cassidy felt bad and sent the man to the doctor, paying the bill in full. The teller of that tale claims the men even remained friends thereafter.

Cassidy also spent time at the Occidental Hotel at least 11 times in 1890, and was known to have a meal there, and perhaps a drink. 

There was also a rather famous drunken revelry in Baggs in 1897. It’s not clear if Cassidy was there, but newspapers of the time reported nine of his associates were, drinking, shooting up local bars and playing cards. Reportedly they paid a silver dollar for every bullet hole they put into Jack Ryan’s Bull Dog Saloon. 

Three Saloons Remain From Cassidy’s Day

Not many saloons that were around in Cassidy’s time along his known pathways still exist, but there are a few. 

There’s the Occidental in Buffalo, the Cowboy Bar in Meeteetse and the Sheridan Inn, built in 1892/1893.

The Thermpolis Museum, meanwhile, has preserved a bar, which Robert Redford once tried to buy, from a saloon Cassidy was known to frequent. It is sometimes open for special events.

Any of these establishments would make a fine place for a shot of whiskey to toast Cassidy, though the Sheridan Inn does have an edge, given its association with the famous outlaw’s publicly documented moment of intoxication reported in 1893. 

Not only that, but it’s aptly named the Open Range and, according to bartender Kael Parker, it has an extensive collection of more than 30 whiskeys to try, including one that mimics frontier times. That’s Bulleit 95 Rye Frontier Whiskey.

Rye whiskey was a staple in the Wild West and wouldn’t fall from favor until after prohibition in 1920. 

Bulleit Rye is the modern-day equivalent of the cowboy’s favorite unadulterated whiskey, according to Harris Cooper’s “American History Through a Whiskey Glass.” It was developed based on an actual frontier whiskey recipe by Seagram Distilling Co. from Kentucky’s Tom Bulleit family. 

It’s also a gold medal winner at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, so it’s delicious, and it has become a favorite among bartenders as a cocktail mixer.

If rye whiskey doesn’t appeal though, there are 29 others to try at the Open Range bar, some with names that would be a nice salute to America’s last outlaw cowboy. These include Horse Soldier, Black Saddle Bourbon and Sheridan Wyoming Rodeo Whiskey.  

Here’s to drinking like Wyoming’s most famous outlaw, Butch Cassidy, from Rock Springs to Sheridan, and all points in between.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.