« J. J. Jarvis "The Little Gem" Saloon & Restaurant »
Friday, September 18, 2009 at 8:13PM 
This is the real thing – a saloon of the 1880–90s. You can practically taste and smell it! Yippee yi yo!
Not like TV or in the movies at all, this is how it was. J.J. Jarvis' Little Gem Saloon and Restaurant served "meals at all hours", so the sign says; there are no menus, so look at what is chalked on the board, or not, call out your order and someone will rustle it up for you. There are curtains on a rod drawn across the left window – classy indeed! Need a room? There is the hotel across the street as evidenced by the reflection in the saloon windows.
No one is putting on airs, so what you see is what you get in this town. Dust and dirt everywhere. Nobody in this photo is going to shovel the equine poop off the street before the ladies with their babies and tots take center front for the cameraman. The saloon regulars, employees and anyone else get into the picture. The proprietor brings out a tray with glasses filled. Alright! The crates stacked on the walk are Medford Brewery Company of Wisconsin (where else would good beer hail from at this time?). There is sheet metal siding meant to look like brick, sort of. The building next door has newspapers covering the windows inside. The railroad may even come through this town.
This was a faded, tattered cabinet card of above average size. No other identification – what we see is what we get!
Reader Comments (3)
If you view Deadwood on DVD and look closely, you'll see it's very close to this picture. I worked the last season as background actor, and we were daily doused with mud and dust, smoke etc. The street was watered until muddy, also the buildings. All the set decoration was authentic to the time, 1878, mostly with antique items from the period. One day I carried a ledger as a prop, and it turned out to be the actual business ledger from an 1880 hardware and lumber company. Costumes were all made from authentic material in correct designs. Between the horses, cattle, chickens, pigs, even a brama bull once, and all the dust, water, ice and charcoal fire smoke, it was indeed a very authentic experience.
Deadwood! One of my all-time favorite made-for-TV efforts, and surely one of the most creative and authentic. I'll never get over HBO dropping the final season. And you were part of the experience!
Thanks for making this comment. I collect all kinds of things besides photographs and I often have the suspicion that I bid against film prop companies and studios - they have the best collections outside of museums, maybe better, and both have deeper pockets than someone like me. Much of my commentary comes from years of collecting and reading just such things as ledgers, letters, diaries, legal documents, etc.; if you want to know how ordinary people lived and what they thought, you don't restrict yourself to newspapers and magazines from the period as interesting as they may be.
And of course we need to save the photos and make them available for everyone to enjoy.
Thanks again. Wish more people commented - it adds so much and is what the site is really about.
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