DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Snake Saloon, right here in Palo Pinto County. Now, if you wanted to understand Thurber — really understand it — you had to understand its saloons. They weren't just places to wet your whistle.
They were where men gathered, where ideas moved across a bar top, where union organizers bent the ears of miners and workers in the middle of everything going on in that town. Saloons were woven right into the life and history of the place. And no saloon in Thurber was more famous than the Snake Saloon.
The first one sat right in the center of town, tucked between the drugstore and the livery stable. Now, the thing that made people remember it — the thing that gave it its reputation — was the bar. A massive horseshoe-shaped bar, built from mahogany.
You can picture it. The kind of bar a man walks into and just stops for a moment, takes it in. But Erath County had other ideas.
In 1904, liquor sales were outlawed there. Most operations would've simply shut their doors and called it a loss. Not the Snake Saloon.
No, the Snake Saloon picked itself up and moved — one hundred and fifty yards west of that original spot — just inside Palo Pinto County. Just across the line. You have to appreciate the commitment.
And the new place was no modest little relocation. The building stretched forty feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet long. The bar inside ran as long as two train cars.
Two train cars. Whatever that mahogany horseshoe had meant to the original room, this new bar was a statement all its own. The Snake Saloon kept pouring, kept humming, kept being exactly what Thurber needed it to be — right up until 1920, when the federal prohibition law put an end to all of it.
Not Erath County this time. Not a county line to cross. The whole country had spoken, and the Snake Saloon closed.
One hundred and fifty yards and sixteen years of stubbornness. That's a story this county still marks with a sign.
What the marker says
Saloons were prominent in the life and history of Thurber and were often settings for union organizational efforts. The first Snake Saloon, located between the drugstore and the livery stable in the center of town, was famous for its massive horseshoe-shaped mahogany bar. After liquor sales were outlawed in Erath County in 1904, the Snake Saloon relocated just inside Palo Pinto County, 150 yards west of this site. The 40' x 120' building featured a bar as long as two train cars. The saloon closed in 1920 after passage of the federal prohibition law. (1995)