How Saving Pinedale’s Historic Stockman’s Saloon Nearly Killed Its New Owner

Stockman’s Saloon and Steakhouse is one of Pinedale’s oldest buildings, and today is a showcase of Wyoming history with fun, first-class cuisine.

Less than five years ago, however, it was three windstorms from falling over and seemed destined to have a date with a wrecking ball.

It found an unlikely savior in its present owner Buck Buchenroth, who had come to Pinedale to retire after a successful career as a fishing guide. Buchenroth has fished all over the world, from Montana and Wyoming to Chile and the Caymen Islands.

But Pinedale has a special place on the Green River that Buchenroth never forgot, and so he bought a ranch right by it not a stone’s throw from porch to the river.

Owning a restaurant or any other business was the furthest thing from his mind.

“I was here to retire,” Buchenroth told Cowboy State Daily. “I’d made all the money I needed to make.”

Strong Foundation

One day out of the blue, fate came calling in the form of a local sheep rancher. He wondered if Buchenroth would come down and take a look at Stockmen’s.

“He wanted this place, like a whole bunch of people wanted this place bad,” Buchenroth said. “But they could not figure out what the hell to do with it.”

It was in pretty bad shape, Buchenroth found when he came to look. The roof was caving in. But when he crawled around under the subfloor, he could see that it was still somehow, miraculously, solid.

“The foundation was good, the timbers were good,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “This was built back when they cut, you know, whole trees and just shaped them and left them, you know, rough. So, it was really strong.”

Buchenroth had a friend who was an engineer come out and take a look just to confirm that what he was feeling was right.

“And he’s like yeah, the roots are good,” Buchenroth said. “But he’s like, ‘Don’t buy this though. It’s a nightmare.’”

But Buchenroth had already made up his mind. He was buying the restaurant at 117 W. Pine St. in Pinedale, and he was going to save it, no matter what.

Surviving The Kitchen

Turned out, that decision almost killed him.

Buchenroth was in the kitchen one summery July day designing out his dream kitchen.

“In business, I’m known as a conceptualist,” Buchenroth said. “So, when I walked into this place, I went through everything, all five floors, and I was like, ‘Yep, I think I got this.’”

The kitchen was the heart of all his ideas, but it had been stripped clean by one of the former owners.

“He took everything to Las Vegas in U-Hauls and sold it,” Buchenroth said. “So, there was nothing left in the kitchen except for one pizza oven. That was it.”

But that was perfect for him, Buchenroth decided. It presented a clean template for the design he was laying out.

And right as he was plotting the kitchen’s future, the entire roof fell on top of him.

Construction workers dug Buchenroth out and he woke up in the emergency room in Jackson.

It’s often said what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Buchenroth applied that twice over to his Stockmen’s project.

“The thing is, no one else was going to do this,” Buchenroth said about saving the iconic Pinedale spot. “It would have been a teardown, and it just has such historical value. And I’m tired of looking at towns die from the inside out, you know what I’m talking about? They’ll build a Kmart on the outside of town, or hotel on the outside of town, but who will take care of the center of town?

“And this was once the epicenter of this town. It was the first hotel in Sublette County, one of the largest buildings in town. It’s one of the first buildings in Sublette County. Not the first, but one of them, and certainly one of the first buildings in Pinedale.”

Fishing Was The Lure That Led To The Restaurant

It wouldn’t seem like an itinerant fishing guide would have what it takes to run a world-class restaurant, but it turns out fishing was the lure that hooked Buchenwald on cooking, and it’s what gave him the experience to run the restaurant at Stockman’s Saloon and Steakhouse.

The cooking all goes back to his first impromptu guiding experience.

“This doctor showed up who had read an article in Boys’ Life magazine about me,” Buchenroth said. “And I don’t think that magazine exists anymore, but back in the day, they did this feature on fly fishing up in Montana. They picked me up in Jackson, took me to Montana for four days of fishing with a guide, and I was in heaven.”

The doctor showed up at a time when fishing guides were uncommon, and Buchenroth had neither a boat nor any real experience on the Green River, where this doctor wanted to fish.

But friends hooked Buchenroth up with a boat, and so it was that he found himself putting into the Green River at the Warren Bridge — and it was a life-changing experience.

“We were crossing the highway up to the Twin Head, north toward Jackson,” Buchenroth said. “And I had no idea where I am.”

But right after they put in, they turned a bend onto what for Buchenroth looked like a slice of heaven on earth, and possibly the world’s best fishing place.

Cooking Every Day

Heaven, though, came with 4-by-8-foot plywood boards painted black with white lettering spelling out the hell on Earth that would happen to any would-be fishermen on this section of the river.

“No trespassing, no fishing — especially no fishing — no anchor, no getting out of your boat,” the sign said. “Or you will see the judge.”

Buchenroth shrugged. There was no one around, and this was the perfect place to catch fish if he’d ever seen a place to catch fish before.

So, they stopped there for lunch and caught a few fish before heading on down the river, no one the wiser.

Buchenroth tucked the place away into his mind. He would be back here again someday.

No matter what.

Later that night, Buchenroth cooked up some of the fish he’d caught for dinner. And what struck him was just how much the good doctor enjoyed that meal.

“That really just made me aware that the fishing may not be so good sometimes, but the meal can always be good,” Buchenroth said. “And guiding would become my job as soon as I graduated from high school, so cooking was every day.”

And, eventually, it would be all over the world.

Chance, Or How The Universe Works?

Buchenroth has had the kind of fishing guide career that would make most any angler jealous.

It really started before the Green River trip, though, when he was just 10 years old, casting a line into the Flat Creek in Jackson right across from what was then an A&W and is now a Dairy Queen.

While he was intent on doing that, a man named Bill walked up to him out of the blue and started talking to him about fishing.

Bill seemed to know a lot about fishing, so Buchenroth listened to everything he had to say.

“Then he wanted to know why I had chosen this particular rod,” Buchenroth recalled. “And I was like, I didn’t select it, it selected me through my granddad.”

When it was time to pack up the fishing gear and go home, the old man invited Buchenroth to come and meet a few of his friends.

At first, Buckenroth wasn’t sure he should. But he was 10, and he felt safe in Jackson on a highway across from an A&W with his 10-speed bike right there.

As Bill was introducing him to his friends — people like Lou Jewett and Lefty Kreh — one of the men asked Bill, “Does he know?”

Bill shook his head. “No, he doesn’t.’”

The guy pointed to the name on Buchenroth’s fly rod, Bill Phillipson.

“This is Bill Phillipson,” he told Buchenroth, gesturing back to Bill. “And he built that rod in your hand. He built that rod probably 35 years ago.”

Buchenroth had been talking to one of the world’s premier bamboo rod builders at the time, the guy who had actually built his grandfather’s special fly rod.

Before long, Buchenroth had an invitation to come and learn fly casting with Kreh, an offer he took advantage of for the next three years running.

Life changing?

For sure.

From Chile And The Caymens And Back Again

Buchenroth’s fishing guide career rescued him from college in a most unexpected way.

About a week before he should have headed to college, he got a call from Wyoming Game and Fish. They were trying to hook three Chilean businessmen up with a Wyoming and Montana fishing guide.

Buchenroth had licenses for both Montana and Wyoming, and had spent a lot of time fishing the Yellowstone. So, he agreed to take the job, but he told the men that he had to leave for college in about a week, no ifs ands or buts.

“They were some of the most brilliant fly fishermen I’ve ever met, but they didn’t really know anything,” Buchenroth said. “They were just passionate about and loved fishing, and they’d read every book they could find about Yellowstone.”

They also spoke Buchenroth’s unspoken language — getting up before dawn to fish all day, well past sundown.

“So, we had a blast together,” Buchenroth said.

But as the week wound down, it was nearing time for Buchenroth to head to college. That’s when the men started talking amongst themselves in Spanish.

“And I don’t speak any Spanish, so I’m like, ‘Hey, fellas, I’m going to get Western on you if you don’t stop speaking Spanish,’” he said.

They did stop with the Spanish, but not with the laughing and giggling all the way back to Jackson.

“Then they were like, ‘We’d like to meet your mom,’” Buchenroth said. “They met with my mom that afternoon and they said, ‘You know, it doesn’t sound to us like you really like college.’”

“And I said, ‘Well, I’m going back to college tomorrow.’ And I was already late for school,” Buchenroth said. “And they were like, ‘Well, we want to spend another week fishing.’”

Buchenroth got mad then, because he’d already told them this was not negotiable. So he told the men that he was done fishing. It was time to go back to school.

“I’m a day late,” Buchenroth recalled telling them. “And I’m on the debate team.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Buchenroth said the men told him. “We’re going to fix it. We’re very important men.”

“Wow guys,” Buchenroth recalled telling them. “You can’t fix this. I’ve got to go to class.”

But the next thing he knew, his mom was putting her arms around him and telling him, “Buck, I don’t think you should go back to college tomorrow. I think you should get ready to go to Chile.”

Buchenroth couldn’t believe his ears.

“What?!” he said.

“And then they were like, ‘We’ve got a Lone Ranger 2 jet helicopter and we want you to come fly copilot for the winter in Chile. We will give you a helicopter, a pilot, and people to fish with.'”

Buchenroth never went back to college after that.

Instead, he fished all over Chile.

A Job Offer From Lee Perkins

Eventually, the Chileans sent their protege back to America. They wanted him to bring fly-fishing equipment back to Chile.

So, Buchenroth arrived in Vermont with a chauffeur to drive him around and meetings with an Orvis dealership.

“They wanted an Orvis dealership in Santiago,” Buchenroth recalled. “And Santiago had 5.4 million people at that point.”

But Chile was also ruled by Augusto Pinochet at the time, and the United States had put a 600% markup on items coming from the United States to Chile.

After about three days of talking about it, the international salesperson told Buchenroth he didn’t think they could work anything out because it was too cost prohibitive.

"But," he told Buchenroth, "Mr. Perkins, the owner of the company, wants to meet you before you fly out tomorrow."

So the next day, Buchenroth arrived early at the Orvis dealership for breakfast in Lee Perkins’ office.

“I loved his office, it was very fishy, very beautiful,” Buchenroth recalled. “And we sat down for breakfast and started talking about my experiences in Chile and in Wyoming.”

In the midst of all that, Perkins said he needed to tell Buchenroth something.

“I know you,” Buchenroth recalled Perkins saying. “I’ve seen you. I saw you teach a shotgun class to the Shah of Iran in Wyoming.”

Buchenroth’s eyes got as big as quarters, and his heart started pounding in his chest. What was going on here?

“You know, I have a shot-gunning school here,” Perkins said.

“I was like, ‘Yes, I’m very aware that you have a shot-gunning school here,” Buchenroth said warily.

“I understand you were qualifying for the United States Olympic team and trapshooting,” Perkins said.

“That's true,” Buchenroth told him. “But I didn’t make it.”

Perkins didn’t care that he hadn’t made the team.

“You have the skills,” he said, “and I’ve watched you. You’re a natural teacher.”

Not only that, Perkins said, but he’d called people in Jackson and Wilson to ask about him, and all the reports had been great.

“People here like you,” Perkins added. “So, I don’t think you should go to college. And I don’t think you should go back to Chile either. It’s a dangerous place. I think you should go back, get your pickup truck loaded up, and move out here to work for me in Vermont.”

Buchenroth didn’t think twice about accepting Perkins’ offer.

“When the owner of the Orvis company asks you to come work for him, you don’t say — if you’re a fisherman like I am — you don’t say no,” Buchenroth said.

Buchenroth stayed with Orvis until his mentor there died. Then he felt a calling to go to the Caymen islands to learn fishing on saltwater flats.

“There were 26 people on this little island 29 miles long,” Buchenroth recalled. “The fishing was spectacular. I fell asleep on the beach there, and I woke up to Haley’s Comet and the Southern Cross constellation and it was just spectacular.”

What he learned in the Caymens would lead to a world championship in bonefishing, and lots more culinary tricks up his sleeve, as well as other fishing trips all over the world in places like New Zealand, Hawaii, Belize, Mexico, Costa Rica.

Every new place he went, he learned something new about fishing and cooking. In fact, the deal he usually made when he agreed to go anywhere was spending a day with the chefs in the kitchen.

“So that’s been my culinary career, studying with people and then working on dishes with them,” Buchenroth said. “And it all starts really from the gun barrel or the fly rod tip to the table for me.”

What’s On The Menu?

Bucheroth is comfortable in any high-end kitchen, and over the course of his career has been executive chef for some high-end restaurants and assistant cook at other places that had no idea what he can really do in the kitchen.

The latter comes from a certain philosophy he’s picked up over a lifetime to know as little as possible.

“You’ll be surprised what you can learn if you decide you just don’t know anything,” Buchenroth said. “It doesn’t really matter what you think you know now, because if you’re open to the idea of not knowing anything about it, you’ll go, ‘Wow, that’s an approach I never would have thought of.’”

What he has decided over a long lifetime of cooking is that he likes an open campfire best of all. And so he’s bringing the best of everything he’s learned from cooking over campfires all over the world to Stockmen’s Steakhouse and Saloon every weekend.

The restaurant, which is open Thursday through Sunday, offers things like prime rib, and all of the pictures of the food look like they were plated by a Michelin-starred chef.

Appetizers range from things like Rocky Mountain oysters with an optional shot of tequila and Stockman’s cocktail sauce to prime rib burnt ends tossed with Stockman’s whiskey barbecue sauce.

Entrees include things like grilled Alaska halibut with mussels in the shell on a bed of linguine and breast of duck served with a medley of whole grains, carrots and artichokes in a cherry reduction sauce.

Prime rib, jumbo scallops, lamb, shaved prime rib, steaks and ahi tuna round out the menu.

“Our best-selling dessert is a huckleberry cheesecake, and our best-selling cocktail is a huckleberry martini,” Bucheroth said. “And I went through 14 different markets to find the right vodka for the martini. I wanted something delicate and smooth, with just an accent of huckleberry and nothing else.”

Huckleberries are a good choice for a Wyoming restaurant, Buchenroth added, because there aren’t many places where they grow — Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Idaho.

It also fits with his forager mentality, constantly rooting around on shorelines for mushrooms or other things to go with a fresh-catch lunch.

“Even the men drink the huckleberry martini,” Buchenroth added. “And they don’t know why they like it so much.”

Back To Heaven On Earth

Buchenroth still has a little scrap of paper that’s another foundational part of his fly-fishing journey and his return home — though at a the time he received it he had not one clue.

The note was written by Jack Schwabacher to a 15-year-old Buchenroth, who had been one of his workers on the Seven Mile River Ranch, also known at one time as the Quarter Circle Five.

“He was impressed with what I did, because I would get up early, check my 100-head of cow-calf, set my irrigation dams for the day and then, by midday, I’d be snorkeling the Green River or Fish Creek,” Buchenroth said. “So, he wrote me this note that said, ‘Bucky Buchenroth can do any goddman thing he wants on Schwabacher lands.’”

He would come to realize the significance of the note one day in 1993.

“He called me up and he said, ‘Hey young Buck,’ because that’s what he always called me,” Buchenroth recalled.

And he told Buchenroth how he’d been trying to sell a piece of his land to this rich dude who’d welshed on the deal. Schwabacher had surveyed the land, put in roads and buried telephone lines for the buyer. So, he told Buchenroth if he could find someone among his wealthy fishing clientele who would want to buy the place, it could be worth a 3% finder’s fee.

Then Schwabacher started to describe the place, mentioning the 4-by-8-foot plywood boards they’d put up to warn people about trespassing there, and the special fence they’d put up to keep the cattle out, because it was his mom’s fishing pool.

“Our brother loves to fish, he didn’t even get to fish there,” Schwabacher told him. “It was just my mom’s home pool, and she always said it was the best fishing on the Green River.”

Buchenroth realized that the spot Schwabacher was describing was the very spot he’d found on that first fishing guide trip with the doctor, a spot he’d been returning to whenever he was in the Pinedale area, no matter what the signs said.

Schwabacher reminded him of the note he’d given him, that said he had permission to do whatever he wanted on Schwabcher lands.

“So, I’d had permission the whole time to fish there,” Buchenroth said. “And all this time, I’d thought I was trespassing.”

It didn’t take Buchenroth long to decide he was going to borrow whatever he had to borrow to buy the property Schwabacher was trying to sell.

“It was really my mom who did it,” Buchenroth said. “She was like, ‘You can’t let it go.’ And so now it’s where I live. Isn’t that fun?”

Buchenroth’s porch is just a stone’s throw from the river where he first discovered his fishing heaven on Earth, the one that would ultimately bring him back to Pinedale so he could catch the Stockman’s Saloon and Steakhouse before it fell.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.