Drinking Wyoming: The Buckhorn Bar On The Northeastern Edge Of The Cowboy State

BUCKHORN — The first impression those entering The Buckhorn get is that there’s 1970s green shag carpet all over the ceiling and the walls. 

The bar, which sits 30 miles northeast of Newcastle and just few miles west of the South Dakota border along the CanAm Highway to Deadwood, is fairly dark inside, so it takes a little time for eyes to adjust. 

That’s when it becomes clear that the fluttering, floating shag carpet is really dollar bills, flying in the breeze of the open doorway. Thousands and thousands of bills, most of them with dates, and funny little messages. 

The sheer number of bills produces an immediate sense of wonder. After seeing that, who could fail to walk further into the bar? Clearly, this bar is winning an unofficial popularity vote with all those bills pinned to its walls and the ceiling.

“Send Nudes,” says one of the bills, along with a hopeful 307 phone number. 

“2008 Nutz,” says another.

“IOWA Troy <3 Jana 2020,” reads a third bill, floating over the top of four or five others with faded messages.

Some of the cryptic messages are so faded, they can’t be read anymore. But they are still there, wordlessly proclaiming a vote for this dive bar, a clear diamond in the rough.

The power of that message is undeniable to many of the people who pass through here. 

General Manager Alyssa Herring, for example, found the bar back in 2020. She was planning to seek work at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, but she came back to the Buckhorn the next day and never left. 

“I’ve lived in Wyoming all of my life,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “And I’ve been a server kind of person all my life. I love people. And then, 2020 happened.”

When she drove past the Buckhorn, the parking lot was so full, she couldn’t find anywhere to park. She kept going, on to Sturgis, but couldn’t get that image out of her mind.

“I came back the next day and asked if they needed any help,” she said. “They did, and I loved it. I loved all the people.”

Famous People Pop In

What Herring especially loved about The Buckhorn is the fact that so many of the guests were people who return to the bar year after year after year.

“Like these guys,” she said, arms sweeping out to identify two people who identified themselves as just Kevin and Amy. “He’s (Kevin) been coming here since he was 5 years old. This place is — a lot of people stop.”

Many of the regulars who stop in get called out on the bar’s busy Facebook page, which frequently features photos and shoutouts. 

At least some of the people who stop in happen to be quite famous, the bar’s owner Dale Steitz told Cowboy State Daily. But even he is not sure just how many famous people have shown up over the years.

“They come in here incognito,” he said. “They don’t want to be recognized.”

So unless a server or someone in the crowd happens to recognize who they are, they stay that way. And, since the bar is often wall-to-wall people, that doesn’t encourage recognizing someone who doesn’t want to be noticed.

Steitz, for example found himself serving Bobby Bare a drink one day. He didn’t immediately recognize the singer-songwriter. It took a minute. Then, because he happens to really like Bare’s music, it hit him. This was someone famous. This was someone who, in fact, had a song in his jukebox. 

The second he realized it was Bare, Steitz immediately went to that jukebox to grab the album cover of his Bare songs, to have him sign it. That then went straight back into the jukebox. 

“We don’t have our awesome old jukebox anymore, because they don’t make cards for it, so we had to upgrade,” Herring said. “But he was on his way to Deadwood to do a show, and then he stopped here for a drink.”

Steitz still has the signed album cover, though he keeps it in a safer place than the bar.  It’s a personal treasure he doesn’t want to lose.

Herring, too, has recognized the occasional famous person trying to pass for a regular guy or gal. Like Sandra Bullock’s husband Jesse James.

“He came to the (Sturgis) rally in 2020,” she said. “But I don’t know if I’ve seen other people, because they try to blend in. They come in here and they don’t want to be noticed, and you see so many faces, it’s just hard to recognize them.”

The legendary late wrestler, Hulk Hogan, on the other hand, when he showed up, was instantly recognizable to everyone in the bar. Hogan died recently.   

“He spent an entire afternoon here,” Steitz recalled.

And everybody had a good time, like usual. 

“When they’re having fun, I’m making money,” Steitz said, nodding his head knowingly, and chuckling. 

Not Just Sturgis

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally isn’t the only time patrons will find a surprisingly busy bar sitting in the middle of nowhere.

While a sign outside the bar advertises the population of Buckhorn as two, The Buckhorn is often crowded silly with dozens and dozens of people.

“Outside of Sturgis, we do have a tourist season,” Herring said. “We have trails that run from here to Deerfield, Rockford, Custer, Hill City, Deadwood, Spearfish Canyon, just all over up here,” she said. “So, we’ll have side-by-sides after Sturgis.”

Those side-by-sides crowd the parking lot much like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally bikes, leaving few places to park at times.

Then comes hunting season, starting with elk, followed by deer and turkey. 

Busiest of all, though, might be snowmobile season.

“That’s our best season,” Herring said. “As long as we get snow, because it’s more months. It’s four or five months.”

Herring hopes to add a campground to the bar scene in the future, to better serve hunters and other trail goers. She’d also like to see vendors during the busy seasons, to help serve patrons and offer souvenirs.

Crazy things have happened at The Buckhorn, inside and outside of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, Steitz adds, laughing with a twinkle in his eye.

But they’re crazy things he won’t talk about with a reporter.

“You probably have enough for an article now,” his friends, Amy and Kevin, helpfully inform Cowboy State Daily.

Don’t Take That Bet

As far as how much money hangs on the wall, Steitz is cagey about it, as could be expected. He hints that an answer might be available to this reporter in exchange for a $5 bet that he knows exactly how much money is there.

Saying that, he pulled a $5 bill from his pocket, reportedly from the last person who took that bet.

“The answer is in the question,” he suggested after a long pause.

But Cowboy State Daily decided money was probably better spent on lunch. A polish hot dog, with sauerkraut and crispy tater tots, and a “buckleberry,” the bar’s name for a lemonade mixed with huckleberry syrup.

Later, as this reporter was eating, Steitz volunteered that his bar has the “coldest beer around,” chuckling a little as he said it.

When this reporter pointed out that it was the only beer around, he smiled knowingly and said, “Exactly.”

That illustrated the trickiness of answers in this little bar on the edge of nowhere in Wyoming. And validated this reporter’s decision not to make any bets.

A Place You Never Want To Leave

Steitz is a Vietnam War veteran who found The Buckhorn much the same way as Herring, back in 1979.

“I hauled my first load of logs here and I said, ‘I ain’t never leaving,’” he told Cowboy State Daily. “That was October of 1979.”

The logs were 80- to 90-footers, he added, from out of California.

He started working at The Buckhorn as a side hustle just on weekends but added more hours over time. 

One day, he decided he should just buy the bar. That was 17 years ago.

Steitz brought in a band for his opening night, just some friends who wanted to help him open the bar. The singer donated a guitar and a sombrero for the occasion, among the artifacts that still hang on the bar’s walls to this day, surrounded by waving dollar bills.

The dollar bill tradition started sometime in the 1970s, about the same time the back rooms and the kitchen were added onto the original bar, which started life as a post office and was moved four times, following the highway, according to Herring.

None of the bills in the bar date back to 1970, however. That’s because thieves broke into the bar one night in 2006 and stole all of the money. 

Patrons of the bar quickly replaced the bills and then some. It’s impossible to tell just from looking that anything like that ever happened.

The Free Museum

Not all the areas of the bar have money hanging off the walls. 

Bills actually aren’t allowed in the back room, for example, which is where Steitz keeps all the hunting trophies he’s collected over the years.

A sign in front of the back room invites patrons of the bar to enjoy a cold beer, a hot meal, and a free museum.

“To me, that couldn’t be said any better,” Amy volunteered. “Because really, you come in, have food, have drinks, and enjoy a free museum. So, when you talk about artifacts and stuff like that, I would say it’s more that.”

Steitz is still adding to his collection of mounts,  even though these days he uses a wheelchair and is on oxygen. 

He’s got a made-in-Wyoming plan for his future that’s pretty simple — hunt and hang out in his cool dive bar for as long as he possibly can.

Cheers to that, Dale.

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