CHICO HOT SPRINGS, Montana — The morning sky was threatening rain when Danielle Camp and her college pals gathered in the dawn light for their friends’ wedding ceremony at the historic hot springs resort.
“Kind of crossing our fingers that it wouldn't impede the outdoor ceremony situation and everything just kind of cleared up," Camp said. "And there was a rainbow that just kept getting more vibrant as the sky kept like lightening up.
“And then, all of a sudden, it was just like the second rainbow was right there."
The double rainbow appeared just before the ceremony at a spot locals call the Field of Dreams, with Emigrant Peak providing a dramatic backdrop.
It was the kind of magical moment that has made Chico Hot Springs a legendary destination for romance — and the reason why wedding season here feels touched by something beyond the ordinary.
That evening at the Chico Saloon, Camp joined her friends along with guests from other wedding parties, who together clearly outnumbered the locals. This is common during summer at watering holes up and down the Paradise Valley.
Running from the Wyoming border by the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park to the trout fishing town of Livingston, Montana, the Paradise Valley is blessed with scenery that will steal your heart.
"It was really pretty to have that in the backdrop and kind of see the start of the new day, celebrating our friends’ marriage," Camp said, recalling the rainbow and the intimate ceremony featuring just the couple, a handful of friends and two dogs — Amos and Dusty.
For Emily Buehler, who traveled from northern Virginia for the same wedding weekend, the choice of venue made perfect sense.
The wedding couple had talked up Chico's "legendary status" and "historic charm," she said. They wanted their guests to "really feel and experience Montana," and Chico delivered exactly that authentic Old West experience.
After wedding ceremonies and days spent floating the Yellowstone River or clopping along local trails on horseback, wedding guests eventually turn up at the Chico Saloon.
Bartenders welcome customers in various states of undress through a glass door leading to the adjacent hot springs pools.
They serve frozen margaritas through a poolside bar window, while also taking care of crowds inside the rustic saloon. This hot-springs-meets-honkytonk combination adds to the amorous vibe, as does the saloon’s colorful history.
Part hot spring hangout, part honkytonk: Montana’s Chico Saloon, just north of the Wyoming border in the Paradise Valley. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Bartender Rachel Moan accepts dry dollar bills from customers inside and soggy dollars from hot springs customers, who are warned — don’t drink too much, and don’t pee in the pool. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Bartender Rachel Moan accepts dry dollar bills from customers inside and soggy dollars from hot springs customers, who are warned — don’t drink too much, and don’t pee in the pool. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
The band Three Eyed Jack rocks the Chico crowd. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily)
Deep Love
Chico Hot Springs has been the setting for love stories since around 1900, when Percie and Bill Knowles established the property as a boarding house for miners.
Bill added a saloon and lively dance hall on "Dance Hall Hill," creating a social hub that attracted everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to Western artist Charlie Russell.
But perhaps no love story is more famous than the one that began here in 1975, when a young actor named Jeff Bridges was filming the cult classic "Rancho Deluxe" in Paradise Valley.
"We're sitting there doing this scene, and I can't stop looking at this gorgeous woman,” Bridges told Oprah Winfrey years later. “I didn't know if she was a guest at the hotel, a waitress, a maid, or couldn’t figure out what she was.
“She had two black eyes and a broken nose, too, and I just couldn't take my eyes off her."
The woman was Susan Geston, and she’d recently been in a car accident. She was working as a waitress to save money for college. When Bridges finally got the courage to ask her out, she initially declined.
"Maybe I'll see you around," she told him.
A few nights later, they met again at a local bar.
"And we danced and that was about it, man. I mean, I was head over heels," Bridges recalled.
Remarkably, a photographer captured the very moment Bridges first spoke to Geston. Ten years into their marriage, the film's makeup artist sent Bridges two photos of that first encounter — pictures he said he still carries as "prized possessions."
One Knee
The dress code at the Chico Saloon might be better described as an undressed code.
At least, that’s how Scott Temple, a local mental health therapist, describes it. He’s witnessed his share of memorable moments while nursing a beer and watching the social dynamics of wedding season unfold — including a proper proposal.
"He was on his knee and everything with the ring box," Temple said of this special moment in the saloon. "Yeah, he did the whole thing."
Unlike the schmaltzy wedding chapels of Las Vegas or the bridesmaid bacanales that have turned Nashville, Tennessee, into the easiest place in the world to purchase a hat that reads “Same Penis Forever,” the wedding industrial complex has yet to commercialize Chico Hot Springs.
However, there are hats at the Chico Saloon: hundreds of them.
Bartender Rachel Moan said patrons used to write their names and clever messages on the old wooden bar, which is now suspended from the saloon’s ceiling.
"That used to be the full bar,” said Moan, pointing to the wooden plank Bridges likely set his beer upon while pining for the woman who would become his wife.
“They stopped letting people write and etch their name to it,” added Moan, who said sometime in the 1990s, patrons started pinning dollar bills and old hats to the ceiling.
Moan maneuvered swiftly beneath the sea of old hats, serving drinks and selling armbands to hot springs soakers entering through the saloon.
She urged caution to anyone consuming booze while taking in the waters. The heat and alcohol can cause dizziness for anyone who stands up too quickly after a long soak.
That’s why before the saloon will take payment in soggy dollar bills, customers must prove they can walk up to the poolside bar window without any signs of intoxication.
"Every time, to make sure no one's passing out because of the alcohol," she explained, no exceptions. A humorous illustrated sign next to the bar window shows the image of someone passed out cold.
When asked if she could assign a human personality to the saloon, Moan summed it up with one word: “Feisty.”
Broken Engagement
By about 9 p.m., as the saloon continued to fill with various wedding party guests and the classic rock cover band Three Eyed Jack cranked out danceable favorites, Audrey Nunberg could really feel the espresso martinis kicking in.
She and her friend Jennica Hammond stepped outside for some fresh air and perspective on the whole wedding scene at Chico.
The two friends from Billings were at the saloon as part of a girls’ trip in the wake of Nunberg’s recent break up.
“I was actually supposed to be getting married this weekend … tomorrow,” said Nunberg, who works as a nanny.
“It’s the right thing,” interjected Hammond, a school counselor off for the summer.
When asked why she broke it off, Nunberg said, “Man vs. boy. Does that make sense?”
“He wasn’t ready, she wasn’t ready either,” explained Hammond. “They were together since seventh grade.”
“No bachelorette trip, just a ‘not wedding’ trip,” said Nunberg, trying to put a name to what she was experiencing. “A ‘not engaged party?’ I dig it.”
Just then, a deaf mini-Aussie shepherd aptly named Chico trotted up to Nunberg and Hammond and they showered it with affection. Its owner claimed the cooks at the saloon affectionately shower Chico with spare strips of bacon from the fryer.
Then first-time actor Jeff Bridges met his wife Susan Geston at the Chico Saloon in 1975. 
Bartender Rachel Moan accepts dry dollar bills from customers inside and soggy dollars from hot springs customers, who are warned — don’t drink too much, and don’t pee in the pool. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Jennica Hammond and her friend Audrey Nunberg — who was fresh off a broken engagement — give love to Chico the dog. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Bartender Rachel Moan accepts dry dollar bills from customers inside and soggy dollars from hot springs customers, who are warned — don’t drink too much, and don’t pee in the pool. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Nathan Evans carries on Chico Saloon’s long tradition of attracting ranch hands who know their way around the dance floor. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily)
‘Dollar Bill Bar’
Still mulling over the state of her love life, Nunberg said, “I don’t know if this is a romantic reset. This is a ‘Dollar Bill Bar.’ I’ll stand by that.”
Nunberg was referring to a country song by performer Sierra Ferrell. In its official video, Ferrell moves nonchalantly around a honkytonk and the place seems to have the same vibe as the Chico Saloon.
The lyrics of the song tell the story of a woman who has broken as many hearts as there are dollar bills on the wall.
Resolute in her newfound single life, Nunberg insisted, “I am not looking to date. Put that in the story.”
Instead, Nunberg and Hammond plan to return to the Paradise Valley throughout the summer, fly fishing and paddle boarding the Yellowstone River, then retreating for evenings at the Chico Saloon or one of the other Old West watering holes in the area.
On one of those nights, they might run into Nathan Evans, who takes care of horses and does other odd jobs around the valley.
“Bounced around all over Montana,” said Evans, sporting a cowboy hat and the gaze of a man who is happy it’s another Friday night in Chico with single ladies all over the saloon.
“You got the hot springs and good live music every weekend, so that's always nice,” said Evans. “I might dance, depending on what happens. I know enough to get by.”
“Warm water and cold drinks, so it’s kind of hard not to want to come,” added Evans, flashing a smile reminiscent of Bridges’ cowboy-hatted character in “Rancho Deluxe.”
In the film, Bridges plays Jack McKee, a man who ran away from a failed marriage back East and found a new life as a hapless cattle rustler in the Paradise Valley.
Like the Chico Saloon during wedding season, “Rancho Deluxe” is a strange blend of romantic nostalgia for the Wild West, the complications of modern life and the contradictions of human desire.
Chico is where Bridges met the love of his life in 1975, and they are still together. It’s where college friends come to witness vows exchanged under rainbows. And it’s where at least one 20-something came recently to toast her broken engagement with espresso martinis.
The dialogue in “Rancho Deluxe” ultimately suggests that romance, like the idyllic West itself, is perplexing, often illusory, and sometimes as Bridges’ character explains, "Love is knowing when to let go."
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
