Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

For sale: Old bar, ghosts extra

On a July afternoon in 1915 at the then-bustling Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, Paul Coski was drinking heavily as he played poker with fellow miners.

Caught cheating, a drunken Coski scooped up the $10 worth of chips in the pot and told proprietor Joe Armstrong to cash him out. When he refused, Coski attacked Armstrong, who pulled a pistol and shot Coski twice.

One of the bullets went through Coski and, 90 years later, remains lodged in the barroom's wall.

It took 10 hours for then-Clark County Coroner W.H. Harkins to arrive at the bar from his First Street office in Las Vegas, 35 miles away. He declared Coski dead where he had fallen and found him officially at fault for the incident.

Some say Coski's troubled ghost still frequents the bar. If so, it's just one of the accessories that anyone who buys the bar will acquire.

Built in 1913, the Pioneer Saloon, one of the nation's oldest stamped-metal tin buildings, is up for sale. The $1.35 million asking price includes two other buildings, all of the bar's antique fixtures and, of course, its colorful ghost stories and history.

"I am asking a lot for the place because I want the new owners to be committed to it living on," said Don Hedrick, whose family has owned the saloon -- the last remaining commercial business in Goodsprings -- for 40 years.

Hedrick has managed the business on State Route 161, seven miles west of Jean, since his father, Don, died in 1996. Open from 11 a.m. to about 10 p.m. daily in the town with a population of less than 250, the bar is staffed by four bartenders. They all work part time and all are women.

At 59, Hedrick has decided to retire. His two children have no interest in running the saloon, which gained international attention in 1942 when screen legend Clark Gable hung out there for days after his wife, actress Carole Lombard, was killed in a plane crash at nearby Mount Potosi.

"Clark Gable got so drunk waiting here, he (passed out and) put cigarette holes in the bar," said bartender Cindy Niles, sharing one of many stories about the Pioneer passed down from bartender to bartender.

No one is sure whether Lombard's ghost still wanders into the saloon looking for Gable. But some patrons among today's eclectic crowd of primarily townsfolk, bikers and tourists swear they share bar stools with spirits.

Gordon Siddons insists that the reason two white keys on the saloon's piano are depressed is not because the piano is broken, but rather "because the ghost of an old miner is permanently holding them down."

Kenn DeWitt says the ghosts for the most part are friendly phantoms who "don't haunt the place, they are just here."

Niles said she does not mind the ghosts.

"Sure the ghosts should be included in the sale of the place -- I don't see why they wouldn't be," she said.

Las Vegas business broker Mike Webster, the salesman for the saloon, says ghosts are not the problem when it comes to trying to sell the place.

"The long distance from Las Vegas will be an issue for the new owner," said Webster, a patron of the Pioneer for more than 30 years. "It's a matter of finding the right person -- either someone who does not mind the long trip or someone who is willing to move to Goodsprings or Jean.

The Pioneer Saloon was built by George Arthur Fayle, who had served as a Clark County Commission chairman and owned the Fayle Hotel in Goodsprings. Fayle died at age 37 in 1918, the victim of the flu pandemic. The hotel burned down in 1966.

The saloon has changed little since indoor toilets were installed in the 1930s.

"One thing about this place is that it is a constant -- it never changes," Niles said. "You can always depend on the Pioneer Saloon."

Another bartender, Karen Cobb, who has worked at the Pioneer for 11 years and has lived in the area for 38, says that the saloon instills a degree of community pride and spirit.

"It's like an adult community center -- a second home," she said. "If you get a flat tire, you can always find someone here willing to change it for you."

DeWitt agrees that the future owners should not change the saloon too much. "A retro bar here will not work," the bar patron said.

The back room of the Pioneer is a minimuseum, filled with memorabilia of Gable and Lombard, historic framed newspaper front pages and old bottles.

Among the antiques in the museum room is an oversized wooden cash register that was used at the bar from 1965 to 1980 and a framed copy of a letter that Harkins, as coroner, sent to Paul Corski's brother, providing the family a degree of comfort that "when he (Paul) was sober he was a gentleman."

In the bar area, the original pot-bellied stove stills heats the building.

Even the cherrywood bar has an intriguing past. Built in the 1860s in Brunswick, Maine, it was shipped in three sections around Cape Horn to San Francisco. Two of the sections were lost and the third became a fixture in a bar in Rhyolite, now a Nye County ghost town, before it was shipped to the Pioneer.

Over the years, the Pioneer Saloon's charm has made it a popular spot for filmmakers. Producers of low-budget films, college productions and documentaries have filmed there, as have producers of major motion pictures including "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Miss Congeniality 2."

Webster said another selling point is the proposed airport for nearby Ivanpah. The airport is expected to spark a building boom that could again bring prosperity to Goodsprings, which in the early 20th century was an important mining town before its decline after World War I.

Ed Koch can be reached at 259-4090 or at [email protected].

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