Editorial: Belly up to the bar

Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006 | 7:10 a.m.

In an area that implodes and re-creates its history, it's good to know that someone thinks it is important to preserve a saloon with a bartop that film giant Clark Gable once burned with a cigarette.

The new owner of the 93-year-old Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, Las Vegas businessman Noel Sheckells, isn't going to remove the potbellied stove or the 19th-century cherry-wood bar at which Gable, in 1942, awaited news of his wife, Carole Lombard, after the actress' plane crashed into nearby Mount Potosi.

A story in Sunday's Las Vegas Sun notes that the Pioneer Saloon, one of the nation's oldest hand-stamped tin structures, has been a popular watering hole since its opening after the turn of the 20th century. It now attracts bikers, sightseers and international tourists to drink alongside residents of the tiny community of 275 situated 35 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Sheckells paid $1 million for the Pioneer, purchasing it from the Hedrick family, which had owned it for more than 40 years. Sheckells told Sun reporter Ed Koch that the only cosmetic changes he plans to make are to add a few period-appropriate bar stools, an antique pool table and some better insulation. Then Sheckells plans to start the process of getting the Pioneer listed on the state and national historic registers.

In a region know for its neon and newness, the Pioneer Saloon is an authentic remnant of an Old West that lives on mostly in history books and the memories of a few old-timers. It is a fine thing that people are willing to preserve this bar and the legends of the era that go with it.