Drinking Wyoming: The Mint Bar Has Come To Life Every Night For 117 Years

SHERIDAN — It’s not until the sun falls from the sky that the 117-year-old The Mint Bar in Sheridan really starts to shine. 

That’s when the neon bucking horse lights up Main Street, shining like a gemstone against a smooth dark velvet sky, just right for showing off the iconic sign. 

It won’t be long after the sign lights up that people start filtering into the bar by twos and threes and then eights and eighteens. They’ll fill up the bar and then spill out onto the street, swaying back and forth like the tail of some prehistoric creature. It’s impossible to tell if they were coming in or going out, but they don’t seem in any hurry either way. Overhead, The Mint’s bucking horse and cowboy lights up the iconic scene.

The cowboy rider isn’t the same design as the state’s bucking horse logo. He has one hand flung to the heavens, perpetually reaching for a balance that’s impossible to find, while his other hand tucks his cowboy hat in against one hip. The horse’s legs are also slightly different, along with other details, that make the design unique. 

The bar has its own copyright on the sign, which was installed in 1938. The sign was an instant people magnet. It’s when everyone started saying, “Meet me at The Mint” — so often, it became the bar’s slogan, and still is today. 

The neon sign is famous in and of itself.

“It is one of the more photographed things in Wyoming,” bar manager Kat Deeds told Cowboy State Daily. “And you’ll see it pop up in all kinds of magazines and travel ads. Blake Shelton used it in one of his music videos a couple of years ago.”

This year, Shelton’s ex-wife Miranda decided to have her clothing line shot at The Mint Bar as well. 

“It’s one of the top cowboy neons in the country, and we do try to keep it as original neon,” Deeds added. “But that’s becoming a lost art, having people who work on that. It’s a very expensive upkeep. That hailstorm that came through in September took out a whole bunch of that, and it was very expensive to get it fixed.”

The horse, for the observant, has a couple of brands on it. One is HT, which stands for Hard Times.

“There’s another brand under where it says HT, and that brand belonged to a gentleman out of Gillette,” Deeds said. “He would sell his horses to the U.S. military at the bar, because his horses were known for their stamina.”

Not The Mint’s First Rodeo

Horses have played a leading role at The Mint Bar since it was first built in 1907. The bar took the place of a barbershop on the corner that it still occupies today on Sheridan’s Main Street. 

That history begins with horse-drawn wagons bringing ice to the bar for frosty brews and sarsaparilla — guaranteed to satisfy a thirst on a hot summer day.

Cowboys were known to ride their horses right into the bar in the early days, particularly during prohibition. They would ride on by the cigar store front, to the secret backroom where all the “good” stuff was sold, and where there were also illicit high-stakes poker games, which attracted the likes of famous author Ernest Hemingway.

Later, after prohibition, there were still horses in the bar. There’s a 1936 photo that shows a crowded bar full of cowboys and tourists, surrounding a cowboy named Red Tate on a horse. Tate is holding what looks like a pistol high over his head, while a clock on the back wall seems to have its hands on the 10 o’clock hour. 

The bartender, named Willis Pointer, looks like he’s pouring a drink for Tate just as fast as he possibly can without spilling it. 

The horse is the calm at the center of the storm of people. He waits patiently, like a true gentleman. It’s as if he, too, expects a drink is coming his way, but all in due time. All in due time.

Kenny Rogers also picked The Mint Bar in 1985 as part of the setting for his movie, “Wild Horses,” along with several other locations — Trail End State Historic Site, City Hall, the fairgrounds, Eatons’ Ranch, the Kendrick Mansion and Main Street itself, where wild horses rode off into a fictional sunset, manes flying in the wind.

It wasn’t The Mint’s first rodeo when it comes to movies by any stretch. 

Sheridan was a popular location for filming during the 1930s to 1950s. Many celebrities enjoyed dropping by The Mint during that time frame, including legendary director John Huston when he filmed the “Red Badge of Courage” in 1951. 

A Feast For The Eyes

The Mint Bar’s customers are a big part of the entertainment at this legendary bar. It’s a great place to people watch. Because, well, there are so dang many of them crowding into the bar. 

Cowboys and college kids. Tourists and locals. Hunters and maybe even a celebrity or two. You never know who you might see at The Mint. 

Some people are dressed to the nines in fancy outfits. Others are proudly wearing dirt-stained cowboy jeans and beat-up Stetsons.

If people watching isn’t your thing, not to worry. There are plenty of other things to watch. The bar is a feast for the eyes. 

Taxidermy animals from all eras decorate the bar. Some are from Wyoming. But some come from more exotic places, like the Yukon.

“We have like the Canadian goose, the Arctic fox, the caribou and things like that,” Deeds said. “But we also have some things that were brought in specifically for the bar.”

That big snakeskin, for example, front and center of the bar. There’s a tall tale behind that. Tall but true, with a Texas connection.

“This guy from Texas named Henry comes in, and I can’t remember his last name, but he saw the snakeskin that was hanging above the bar at the time and he says, ‘Hey, that’s not a rattlesnake, I’ll show you guys a rattlesnake,’”  Deeds said.

Three days later, he came in with a whopper snakeskin he’d hunted himself that put the old one to shame. Eight feet long with 27 buttons on it. And that’s the one hanging out front now.

The older, tinier snakeskin is still in the bar as well. It’s not as easy to see. It melts almost invisibly into the wall, as if it might be dying from shame.

A Story For Every Artifact

Deeds has made it a point to learn the stories behind all the artifacts at the bar. Every time a customer would ask a question, she’d say I don’t know, but I’ll find out.

And find out she did.

“People have compared the bar to a museum,” Deeds said. “And that’s what it really is. There are original newspaper articles from right after Custer’s last stand on the wall. There are photos from rodeos all over the country, and there are lots of photos of local people on our walls.”

One of the most iconic artifacts in the bar are the cedar shingles with whiskey-laced brands. 

There’s a story behind them, too.

“The bar was remodeled in the 1940s and the early 50s,” Deeds said. “And the owners paid this guy named Tuffy to sit there and burn all these brands in.”

While Tuffy worked, he drank whiskey. Eventually, though, his work would start to get just a wee bit crooked. 

“They’d send him home for the day,” Deeds said. “So, there’s approximately 9,000 brands on the walls, and they are local to the area. You see them on the walls, the ceiling, they go all the way into the back room. And they’re all made of cedar.”

It was during this remodel that all the twisted cedar and knotty pine were added to the bar along with the drawer handles made from animal parts. 

People are always finding new artifacts at the bar, no matter how many times they’ve been in there before, Deeds added. Like the customer who was throwing her trash away after lunch, and then noticed a family photo on the wall she’d never realized was there before.

“She was like, ‘Wait a minute,’” Deeds recalled. “That’s my horse!”

As she leaned in closer, she realized it wasn’t just her horse. It was her dad, too. 

“She’s like, ‘Is it worse that I recognized my horse before my dad?’” Deeds said, chuckling.

There’s No Food, But You Can Drink Like Hemingway

One thing you shouldn’t expect to find at The Mint is food. There isn’t much in the way of that. 

Peanuts and chips if you’re lucky. 

Snickers bars and gum if you’re not. 

But the drinks are surprisingly broad for a place that bills itself as a cowboy bar. 

Of course, there’s plenty of beer and whiskey. In fact, there’s 20 different kinds of whiskey and bourbons, including the hard to find and much sought after Blanton’s.

But there are also fun liquors like Goldschläger and Clase Azul, a Mexican tequila that has a silver ball on top that can be rung like a bell. There’s also Don Julio for true tequila connoisseurs.

They’ve got Empress 1908 Gin, too, a fun liquor that changes colors. It will turn pink when mixed with acidic ingredients and blue when mixed with things like cucumber or simple syrup.

The pea blossom liquor contains an antioxidant called anthocyanin, which changes color based on pH. It will stay purple though, as long as all the ingredients remain neutral. 

There are quite a few cocktails, though there’s no menu listing them.  

A favorite at the bar, for those in the know, is the Cowboy Colada, which is Pendleton whiskey and tequila mixed with pineapple and a splash of soda.

One of the most interesting cocktails they can make though, is one that Hemingway loved. And that’s particularly appropriate for The Mint and its legendary history, because Hemingway was a regular at the bar when he was in Sheridan working on his bestseller, “A Farewell to Arms.” 

The drink is the daiquiri. But not that fruity, frozen sugarpop most people think of as a daiquiri today.

Hemingway’s daiquiri was eight parts superior rum, two parts fresh lime juice, and one part simple syrup — although Hemingway sometimes skipped the sugar altogether.

“It shouldn’t taste of rum,” Hemingway said of the drink. “It shouldn’t taste of lime, and it shouldn’t taste of sugar. It should just taste of daiquiri.”

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

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