DOUGLAS, Wyo. (AP) - There’s only one building on the main street of Douglas with a white wolf statue perched on the roof.
It’s the same one with antlers protruding from the barn wood walls. The one where wooden figures play poker on the front benches next to a wagon wheel, more wolf statues and a giant bottle of Rainier beer.
Come in the back door of the White Wolf Saloon, and you’ll nearly run into a large taxidermy dog standing next to a mechanical miner. On the way to the bar counter, you’ll pass dozens of other stuffed critters, an antique wooden phone booth, church pews and hundreds more flea-market and garage-sale curiosities.
Owners Carl and Diane Strode greet customers there, surrounded floor-to-ceiling by collectibles they gathered for years while living in Miami and preparing for their retirement dream.
They might point out the original 1800s building peeking through liquor bottles behind the counter. The walls around the pecan bar top were part of a later addition that’s now nearly a century old.
A sign behind the counter lists 160 beers with myriad western craft brews.
Carl always wanted to open a bar after retiring as a high school teacher and coach in Miami for 30 years. The couple looked all over before Diane spotted a “haunted saloon in Douglas, Wyoming” on eBay.
“We wanted to move out West and buy an old saloon somewhere near the Rocky Mountains,” Carl said.
A LITTLE STORY ABOUT CARL AND DIANE
Carl and Diane met when he took a dog to a veterinary clinic in Miami where she worked as an office manager for 31 years. The couple, now married 17 years, lived in a log cabin filled with taxidermy animals from their frequent visits to the flea market. Now, those animals fill their bar.
They were ready to leave behind Miami’s crowds, crime and traffic by late 2007.
That’s when Diane traveled to see the bar she found on eBay and persuaded the owner to hang on until Carl finished the school year. The owner agreed to pull the bar off eBay, and the White Wolf Saloon opened in time for the Wyoming State Fair that summer.
The couple had a deal from the start: If he got the bar, she got to name it. She did, after the white wolf-hybrid dogs they once owned in Florida. The blue eyes of their canine logo honor a former pet husky.
The two agree the best part of their business is the customers and friends they’ve made.
There are regulars, like a local district attorney who rides his horse to the “ride-up, drive-up” window with a hitching post installed for him. A photo they took of him there hangs on the wall, and also caught the eye online of a woman in Ireland, who’s now his fiancee.
Also on the walls are several photographs from customers including a pair of moose pulling a sleigh, Wyoming’s famous horse Steamboat bucking in 1910 at the Douglas Fairgrounds and another of a now-deceased customer riding in Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1949.
Hanging from the ceiling are T-shirts that say “I drank my way around the world at the White Wolf Saloon,” for customers who finish the 60-beer tour. They’re also honored on the “Howl of Fame” board.
Visitors can entertain themselves with a TV showing old beer commercials, plus regulation-sized shuffleboard and other games. There’s also a flat screen for sports.
Wyoming State Fair crowds pack the bar in August, and summer brings travelers from all over the world en route to Yellowstone National Park. A signed Canadian Mountie hat rests on a moose head overlooking the bar.
There’s a story behind every object, and the Strodes are happy to tell you any of them. Their prized taxidermy piece is a 13.5-foot alligator said to be Elvis from the 1980s TV series Miami Vice, they said.
The stuffed dog near the back door was one the owners brought in since moving to Wyoming. They later learned the dog had been a local senior citizen’s favorite pet, named Bud Light. The man’s daughters said the miner next to the dog resembles their father.
“So they’re together again,” Diane said.
While the Strodes are happy to share stories and pour beers, there’s one thing they don’t do in the bar: drink.
“You can’t own a candy shop and have a sweet tooth,” Carl said.
FINDING A HOME
The owners knew they had work to do when they chose the bar. Tarps covered the pool tables to keep off the rain off. The deteriorating, three-part structure needed numerous other repairs.
The original building now houses the White Wolf Saloon’s dart room and storage areas. The first saloon there was built in 1887 and belonged to a man named Theodore Lee Pringle, according to information from the owners. A walk-in beer cooler there still features an antique wooden door and hardware.
The main seating area toward the back was brought to the site in about the late 1960s to add to the middle 1918 section, where the bar counter stands, Diane said.
The Strodes gutted the space, added air conditioning and a new fireplace and covered the walls inside and out in old-fashioned barn wood. Carl built the bar counter and accented it with framed antique tin ceiling tiles that were extras from the Occidental Hotel in Buffalo.
There’s also some ghosts, Diane said. But the specters, which include some former customers and owners, are friendly.
If you ask, Diane will share all she knows about the mysterious happenings at the White Wolf. One of the ghosts used to run a trucking business at the counter from a payphone with a long cord, until the day he fell dead off his bar stool, Diane said.
The town itself has become like a ghost town, she said. Many businesses in Douglas are for sale because of the state’s economic downturn. Business has slowed, too, although the couple is hopeful the economy is beginning to improve.
Regardless, they have no regrets about moving, and they’re here to stay, Diane said.
Now, they live with three dogs, two cats and two horses about 5 miles outside Douglas. They found their home on Craigslist.
The couple is happy living their dream in the sleepy Wyoming main street surrounded by prairie. Now Carl grows impatient when he’s behind four cars at a traffic light, he laughed.
They’ve made many close friends. The wood bar top, ceiling tile accents and several items in the bar were gifts from some of them, they said.
Carl never visited the business or their new home before the two moved from Florida. But it just felt right to both of them, he said.
“I never saw anything but pictures, and I trusted her judgment,” Carl said. “Best thing we ever did, for sure.”
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Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, https://www.trib.com
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