Occidental Hotel

The Occidental began in 1880 on the old Bozeman Trail road, where Buffalo was taking shape beside Clear Creek, and grew into the town's grand hotel. In 1908 its rough first barroom gave way to the elegant saloon that stands today. The saloon's pressed-tin ceiling is pocked with bullet holes left by quarrels over cards and worse; poker games here were said to run for days, and in 1918 a father and son, John and Al Smith, won the hotel and saloon themselves in one.

Its guest list reads like the region's history: cattlemen and cowboys, sheriffs on both sides of the Johnson County War, Buffalo Bill and later Ernest Hemingway. Owen Wister spent time in Buffalo and is believed to have stayed here, and the hotel holds that he drew on what he saw in its lobby for The Virginian; other Wyoming hotels make the same claim, and Wister said he drew on the whole territory. Its restaurant carries the novel's name.

By the 1990s the building was close to being torn down. John and Dawn Wexo bought it in 1997 and spent years restoring the rooms, the lobby and the saloon, helped by local people who brought back fixtures they had saved. It is open as a hotel, and the saloon and the ground floor can be visited without staying.