Cowboy State Daily’s 'Drinking Wyoming' is presented by Pine Bluffs Distilling.
VIRGINIA CITY, Montana — Memories shared during happy hour at the Bale of Hay Saloon extend back to the late 1960s and were recalled in vivid technicolor by locals gathered Friday for the start of the summer tourist season.
Before the 1960s, there’s about 100 years of foggy recollection. The place opened as a saloon sometime around 1863 when Virginia City became Montana’s second gold strike boom town and second territorial capital.
On the first Friday night of the 100-day busy season stretching roughly from Memorial Day to Labor Day, locals eagerly unearthed golden “you should have been there” stories about the Bale’s heyday, when movie stars like Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman rolled into town.
The scenes Hoffman shot for “Little Big Man” in the bar in 1970 are captured in photos on the wall. Nicholson showed up in 1975 while shooting “The Missouri Breaks.”
Back then, the Bale was part Old West saloon, part biker bar and part hippy hangout.
One patron recalled dropping acid up on Boot Hill, where Virginia City’s infamous embrace of 1860s vigilante justice is memorialized by the graves of hanging victims. By the time he made it to the Bale of Hay just down the hill, the faces of patrons and classic Western architecture were beckoning.
Up front at the Bale were classic turn-of-the-century coin-operated amusements like one that somehow played a violin. Further inside beyond the swinging saloon doors, there was the bar. Families on vacation sometimes strolled in, only to immediately U-turn out of there before too much not-so-family-friendly counterculture rubbed off on them.
It’s easy to imagine mom and dad steering their children back outside onto Virginia City’s charming main street and asking, “Who wants some ice cream?”
Hustling Pool And A Gun Goes Off
Between shots of whiskey and lines of cocaine, patrons of the Bale during the shaggy 1970s played a lot of pool.
Gregory Smart moved to Virginia City 55 years ago from Aspen, Colorado, after a friend told him he could buy a house in Virginia City for $1,200. Smart still lives in the house.
He recalls watching a local pool hustler at the Bale of Hay push a hapless mark too far until a fight broke out.
"All this commotion is going on, and all of a sudden, ‘Bam!’ a gun goes off,” said Smart, who figured Ford Bovey — the son of the owner and the manager on duty at the time — fired the gun into the ceiling.
Smart was with a young lady that night, and the next day when he showed up for work — he was the morning “swamper” for the Bale back then — there was a bullet hole in the wall right next to where his date was standing.
“The luckiest girl I was standing with,” said Smart. “The bullet couldn't have missed her head by more than a foot.”
Two longtime locals hold court: Eric Barsness and Roger Williams. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
The night of gun: Gregory Smart points to the hole made by a bullet that nearly hit his date. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
It’s a new day at the Bale of Hay Saloon with new manager Marie Clark taking over and Mati Bishop tending bar. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Montana’s oldest bar, the Bale of Hay in Virginia City. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
By the time elk season rolls around, the Bale of Hay is usually closed for the winter. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily)
Wild West To Family Friendly
Ford Bovey’s parents, Charles and Sue Bovey, amassed and protected more than 200 historic properties, turning Virginia City and nearby Nevada City into premier heritage tourism destinations and safeguarding some of the best collections of gold rush architecture in the United States.
In 1997, the state of Montana bought the Bovey properties and artifacts for $6.5 million, creating the Montana Heritage Commission to manage, preserve and interpret the historic resources for the public.
That means today, the state of Montana is the landlord for the Bale of Hay.
Since its resurrection after a fire in 1983, the Bale has operated like a local clubhouse for Virginia City locals who welcome a mob of tourists starting with Memorial Day weekend.
Now a family-friendly vibe extends throughout the space, which includes lots of shady outdoor seating, an ancient cottonwood tree that recently lost its top and doors that open into the Virginia City Opera House next door.
Kal Poole, executive director of the Montana Heritage Commission, said he figures at the height of the summer season, there are more actors per capita in Virginia City than Los Angeles.
Virginia City’s population sits at around 250, and in addition to the Opera House there’s also the Brewery Follies, a comedy cabaret based in the historic H.S. Gilbert Brewery up the street from the Bale.
“It wasn't originally a bar next to a theater,” said Poole, explaining how the Bale got its name. “It was originally a bar next to a bunch of smelly horses. It was literally right next to the stables."
Bales of hay sat outside for the horses, which remain a big part of life in Virginia City.
"I got a request the other day for more hitching posts in town, which I found to be a highly unique request,” said Poole. “And I don't think there's a whole lot of jobs like mine where you're trying to think, ‘OK, what's the best way to build a good hitching post?’"
Outside in the slanting evening light, arrivals for the Bale’s annual horseback poker ride were tying up their mounts.
By morning, the streets of Virginia City were crowded with riders on horseback before trotting up into the hills where they collect cards and return to the bar to see which rider holds the winning hand.
Tunnel To A Brothel
Longtime local bartender Marie Clark stepped up this summer to take over as manager of the Bale.
She planted flowers outside and poured one of the Bale’s house specials: The Meagher Mule, a play on the Moscow Mule named after Thomas Meagher (pronounced “Marr”), the Irish revolutionary who turned up in Virginia City and became Montana’s first territorial secretary.
Clark said while bartending at the Bale, she’s seen what appeared to be spirits from another dimension playing with the balls on the pool table.
“Every once in a while you're like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, nobody's here.’ And they're just moving around,” said Clark. “I was here by myself trying to close and then the balls rack.”
Ghost tours of Virginia City are a popular draw, and everyone likes to trade stories about what life was like when brothels still operated in town, like the one that was reportedly across the street from the Bale.
“There was a tunnel to the brothel,” said Clark, explaining that it’s caved in now.
Back in the day, though, big winners at the poker table at the Bale could pass discreetly through the tunnel over to the house of ill repute to spend their winnings on the company of some not-so-fine ladies.
Even that’s worth celebrating in Virginia City. Brothel Days are coming up next month, when the town encourages visitors to dress up in period costume and get in touch with their inner working girl. Events include bed races and the Shot Trot, which sounds like a relay race George Dickel whiskey might sponsor.
“How many places are there where you can shut down a major highway and do a Shot Trot up Main Street, where you do a shot in the middle of the road?” asked Clark, before returning to the business at hand. She had a bartender to train and more flowers to plant.
Mati Bishop was behind the bar for the first time this season Friday. He also works as a reporter for the oldest continuously operating weekly newspaper in Montana — The Madisonian, which has been delivering news about Virginia City, Ennis and the rest of Madison County since 1873.
Bishop figured bartending at Montana’s oldest bar was a natural fit.
"I like people. I collect experiences,” said Bishop. “My goal is to be the most interesting guy in the nursing home when I get there. So this is just right down that path."
Regulars at the Bale of Hay socializing beneath a painting titled “Nymphs and Satyr.” (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
The view of Virginia City from Boot Hill. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Virginia City’s Boot Hill. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Virginia City’s Love Bus. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Charles Bovey, whose family amassed the collection of buildings and artifacts now managed by the Montana Heritage Commission. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
The horse crowd is asking for more hitching posts in Virginia City. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Montana’s oldest bar, the Bale of Hay in Virginia City. (Alfredo Jimenez via Google)
The Regulars
Despite the softer focus for families, there’s still plenty of Old West in the Bale. Some of those rowdy young men who may or may not have frightened the tourists with their long hair and dilated pupils are still hanging around.
A boomer crowd forms the core of happy hour regulars, some seated at a round table situated underneath a giant painting titled “Nymphs and Satyr,” another curio left in Virginia City by the Bovey family.
The Boveys gave Roger Williams his first job making change at the Bale. He grew up in Virginia City, and these days he parks his restored Ford Model A out front. He lives behind the bar in a building that used to be the town jail.
“I’m conveniently located right across the alley,” said Williams, who aside from four years in the Air Force, has spent his whole life in Virginia City.
As he sipped red wine and perched himself in his regular seat on the front porch, Williams tried to explain the allure of the Bale.
“It's been a great gathering place,” said Williams. “You always have the old wood stove going, and it's warm and it's very inviting.”
As more horseback poker ride participants moseyed in with cowboy hats and bedazzled jeans, Williams and the other regulars chatted out front.
They recognized this moment as the calm before the tourist storm — that for the next 100 days, they would share the Bale with strangers crammed into RVs and minivans.
With his eyes brightening at the thought of a fun summer ahead, Sean Bogue took in the evening sun in front of the Bale. He was waiting for the right moment to pull his “Love Bus” into a strategic parking place on Virginia City’s main strip.
The Love Bus is a rolling reminder of Virginia City’s history as a hideout for more than gold miners, Old West outlaws and history buffs. Long-haired refugees from places like Aspen and Seattle also rolled into town back when $500 got you through the whole summer and the Bale of Hay had a bit of an edge.
About a dozen years ago, Bogue bought a place surrounded by poppies he figured Chinese immigrants planted during the gold rush.
He fell in love with the Bale because he could bring his young kids and let them run around while he made new friends.
Bogue missed the gold rush and the biker-hippy days of the late 1960s and ’70s. But he was in Virginia City for the goldfish races.
His eyes wide, his memories fresh and entertainingly strange, Bogue described a plastic water track where goldfish race head to head, with goldfish owners using straws to blow bubbles behind the fish to spur them on.
“It gets hysterical. It's late at night, in the bar there's nothing, nothing like it in the world,” said Bogue, who hopes Clark — the new Bale manager — will bring back the goldfish races.
Like so much in Virginia City, the custom-made goldfish racetrack is still around, he said, preserved as a relic worth protecting.
“It’s somewhere in one of the artifacts places the state has with all their junk and historical shit,” said Bogue. “That was just the most mind-blowing memory.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
