The Wyoming Bar in Rawlins, WYO, served whiskey, cigars and rented rooms for 136 years. This winter it comes down, and with it the last original building on Front Street. The Wyoming Bar in its tavern days. (Carbon County Museum)

Tomorrow? An election or something.

In 1900, the trains pulled into Rawlins right across the street from a two-story stone saloon called The Wyoming. Its owner advertised it as “the handiest place in the city for the traveling public.” A cowhand or railroad man could step off the platform and buy a glass of Old Crow bourbon, a Hoffman House cigar and a bed for the night, all under one roof.

That building still stands at 413 West Front Street, beside Depot Park. Its teal stucco is peeling, its roof is sagging, and its doors carry “DO NOT ENTER” notices. The bids to tear it down are due November 10.

Whiskey downstairs, rooms upstairs for all sorts of things.

Local historians say the building began as a one-story hotel around 1890. About 1900 a second story went on, and it became The Wyoming. Robert Freedman was the proprietor.

Freedman’s newspaper ads billed it as a “Club House and Saloon” with “Elegant Sleeping Rooms for Transients.” He promised “Fine Wines, Liquors, Cigars”: Sherwood Rye, Old Crow bourbon, Three Star Hennessy brandy, and ale and porter by the pint. One ad closes, “I solicit a share of your trade, and will give you square treatment. Call and see me.”

Robert Freedman’s ads for The Wyoming, around 1900. (Carbon County Museum)

The upstairs rooms were not always rented out just for sleeping. According to the Carbon County Museum, the club rooms also served as a brothel.

The Wyoming had plenty of company. A photograph from around 1907 shows Front Street lined with saloons, and The Branch, the Club Saloon and a bakery all stood within a few doors. At one point, 16 bars reportedly operated between Third and Sixth streets.

Front Street around 1907, with The Wyoming’s sign next to The Branch. (Wyoming Tales and Trails)

The Wyoming outlasted its neighbors, though not always quietly. In 1950 its owner was murdered in a back storage room.

By the 1990s it was a plain neighborhood tavern. A white stucco front had covered the old stonework, a blue-and-white “THE WYOMING BAR” sign hung over the door, and pickups parked along the curb. Inside stood a mahogany Brunswick backbar from the saloon’s early days.

One by one, the other early buildings on Front Street were torn down or remodeled past recognition. The Wyoming was the one that survived. Then the roof began to leak and nobody fixed it. Water worked its way through the building, and in 2016 the city declared it dangerous and boarded it up.

The property changed hands six times after 2011, and the taxes went unpaid. Finally, a trust connected to the building offered to donate it to the Rawlins Downtown Development Authority.

Here is the woman who has to let it go:

Pam Thayer, Executive Director of the Rawlins Downtown Development Authority.

The building now rests in the hands of Pam Thayer, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority. She has spent years trying to bring downtown Rawlins back to life, and the decision to demolish the old saloon has been hard on her.

Thayer first walked into The Wyoming in February 2006. “It was cool inside,” she remembers.

Twenty years on, she can’t find a way to save it. “It breaks my heart to tear it down, but sometimes you have to do what’s best for the community,” she said. “It’s sad when we lose our last private building.”

She is also practical. She calls the building a “big elephant” sitting downtown, and says she is ready to see it gone. Her verdict, in four words:

“Take that sucker down.”

Last call

It will take about $600,000 to bring the old saloon down safely, and nearly $494,000 of that comes from a federal Community Development Block Grant. Eleven contractors from Wyoming, Colorado, Montana and South Dakota came to the required walk-through. None of them could get more than about 10 feet past the front door before it was too dangerous to go on.

if you are interested, bids will be opened at Rawlins City Hall at 2 p.m. on November 10. The city council is expected to award the contract on November 17. Contractors have to try to save the exterior stone, but Thayer doubts much of it will be worth keeping.

One piece of The Wyoming has already escaped. The old Brunswick backbar was taken out years ago and now stands at the Cowboy Saloon & Dance Hall in Laramie. Its owner, Mary Hopkins, calls it “a beautiful mahogany piece that comes with so much history.”

The Wyoming’s Brunswick backbar in its new home at the Cowboy Saloon & Dance Hall in Laramie. (Google Maps user photo)

The rest of the saloon is going, but you can still order a drink in downtown Rawlins at the Hole In the Wall on W. Spruce Street if I-80 gets boring, east or west-bound. There is decent lodging up the street if necessary, and a helpful sign in the ‘loo advising patrons not to puke in the urinals.

I remember Rawlins from those years. In the mid-1970s we drove through it on a dozen or more east-west road rallies- 24 times across the country on all the big roads, and again in 1977-78 on our seasonal move from Pensacola to Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. Front Street was one of the places where the Old West still felt close.

Now the Old West is fading, one building at a time. Robert Freedman once promised square treatment to anyone who would “call and see me.” Anyone who wants one last look at his saloon has a few weeks left.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Photo credits and sources

Photos
The Wyoming Bar, about 1990s: Carbon County Museum
Newspaper advertisements for The Wyoming, about 1900: Carbon County Museum
Front Street, about 1907: Wyoming Tales and Trails
Brunswick backbar in Laramie: Google Maps user photo
Pam Thayer: her LinkedIn profile (photo Rawlins Downtown Development Authority).

Sources
The Wyoming Bar In Rawlins: 136 Years Of Saloons & Brothels Is Getting Torn Down, Cowboy State Daily, Nov. 2, 2026
Notice of Finding of No Significant Impact (Wyoming Bar Demolition Project), City of Rawlins, July 13, 2026
Rawlins Removes Dangerous Structure, Bigfoot 99 Radio, June 16, 2026

Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com