John Forrester and His Shoot-out Saloon

In August of 1907, John C. Foster, a transplanted Arkansan, in an ad in the Eastern Utah Advocate, claimed about his Senate Saloon:  “We cater to the best of trade.”  This might have amused some of his customers who well remembered a fatal shoot-out that occurred in the Senate Saloon only a few years earlier.

At the turn of the 20th Century the town of Price, Utah, shown above, had a reputation as a “A hell-roaring…bawdy, saloon-filled oasis for miners, gamblers and recluses.”  A local poet penned this verse:

Here rots what is left of the city of Price

Whose officers never would take good advice.

"Twas a haven of riches for all sons of witches,

Who reveled in crime and flourished in vice.

The gun play in the Senate Saloon in Price was the outcome of a long series of circumstances involving one of the last major outlaws in the West, Butch Cassidy, shown here.  On April 21, 1897, Cassidy and an accomplice pulled off a daylight robbery in Castle Gate, Utah, about twelve miles from Price, making off with $7,000 in gold.  Given a tip about Cassidy’s camp a posse from the town went out, killed two sleeping gang members and claimed they had killed Butch himself who had a $4,000 bounty on his head (worth $144,000 today) rather than on other gang members who had only $500 value.

When the corpse proved not to be Cassidy’s, the posse of twenty men each had a share of  $500 or $26.30.  Even so, it was more than the average two months pay — enough for a posse member named Wurf  to cheat another named Watson out of his share.  When Watson found out he came gunning for Wurf inside the Senate Saloon.  Drunk, he fumbled the shot and Wurf plugged him in the groin and followed with a second bullet that traveled up Watson’s rectum and lodged in his rib cage.  Although Watson was dying, Wurf ran across the street to the Price Trading Company, got a rifle to finish the job but was arrested while loading it.  A friendly judge later dismissed all charges.

At that point John Forrester was living and work in Colton, Utah. Shown here, it was a line of shacks and saloons in Carbon County about a dozen miles north of Price. Born in Boone County, Arkansas, about 1860 (records differ), John was the son of William and Sarah Forrester and raised on a farm along with four other siblings.  When and why he determined to move the 1,250 miles west to Utah is not recorded.  He likely was hoping for a bonanza through mining.  The 1900 Federal census found Forrester in Colton with a wife, Margaret C. (called “Maggie”) Curtis, native-born in Utah, who was about ten years younger than he.  They had married in Carbon County in 1897 and by 1900 had two children.  A third would arrive two years later.  Forrester’s occupation was given as “miner.”

Forrester must have been fully aware in Colton of the Wurf-Watson shootout but that event seemingly had little impact on his decision to move to Price and buy the Senate Saloon.  My hunch is that he had made a decent strike, sold his mining rights, and had the cash to purchase the booze palace.  This likely occurred in the early 1900s, not long after the shoot-out. By 1904 Forrester was sufficiently established in Price to be chosen as treasurer of Carbon County.

The saloonkeeper’s claim that he was catering “to the best of trade” was reinforced by serving quality whiskey over his bar.  He advertised that the Senate Saloon featured “Crystal Brook Sour Mash Whiskey” and “Quaker Maid Rye,” two  “top shelf” brands from the Simon Hirsch company of Kansas City.  As a frequent customer, Forrester likely would have enjoyed the giveaways for which Hirsch was known, including a large paperweight advertising Crystal Brook and a racy saloon sign for Quaker Maid.

At the same time Forrester was buying his beer closer to home, from the Becker Brewing and Malting Company of Ogden, Utah. In 1890 John S. Becker and his two sons, Gustav and Albert, had established the brewery, shown above, along the banks of the Ogden River.  Becker produced good beer and had a strong customer base in the West, something Forrester recognized.  With a token attributed to his saloon, he would give you a 12.5 cent break on a full stein of Becker.  As a saloonkeeper, John Forrester appears to have kept the peace at the Senate Saloon.  No further deadly altercations were reported.

Although it is not recorded how many years Forrester guided the fortunes of the Senate saloon, he would not have been forced to shut down by prohibition laws in Utah until 1917, one of 24 states to have adopted statewide “dry” statures by that year.  The 1920 and 1930 censuses found him living in Price with Maggie.  In both surveys his occupation was recorded as “none,” suggesting that Forrester had accrued sufficient wealth during his years as proprietor of the Senate Saloon to retire. 

The 1940 census revealed that the Forresters had left Price and moved to San Gabriel, California, where they were living with their daughter, Venable, and a grandson.  When John died in 1940 according to his gravestone he was 79 years old.   Maggie would live another 13 years, dying in 1953.  The couple is buried together in San Gabriel Cemetery.  

Note:  Butch Cassidy and his gang figure prominently in another vignette on this blog, posted November 18, 2015.  It features Jack Ryan, a Wyoming saloonkeeper who was Cassidy’s friend and possible accomplice.