What doesn’t happen at the Snow Creek Saloon in Red Lodge? It’s a place where everyone feels welcome and where you sense anything can happen from cat fights to Harleys being driven through it, to even Colonel George Custer nonchalantly making his way through there on July 4, backed up by a band of sorts.
Owner Carl Laurizen Jr., known affectionately as Carl. Jr., has seen it all and then some. Always there with a wink and a smile, he’s any bar’s perfect host and on Sunday’s you even get free hot dogs and the occasional buffalo steak to wash down while watching the live football plays on the numerous televisions placed around the walls.
Carl originally started his bar tending career while majoring in art history at Eastern Montana College, Billings, and Montana State University, Bozeman.
“It was the usual way of making extra cash,” he said. “Some times I was making $200 a night in tips and I thought, ‘Why not become a bartender.’”
Carl’s logic is easy to understand, and 20 years, two bars in Billings, the Lamplighter Lounge and the Lower Level, have now passed since that decision.
Carl, who has run the Snow Creek with his father, Carl. Sr. since 1991, prides himself on making silk purses out of sow’s ears whenever he has started a bar.
The Snow Creek has always been associated with beer aside from one ironic point in its life when it was a Finnish Temperance Hall where AA groups used to meet.
At one time the place was called the Red Rug, then the Green Derby and the Broken Ski.
The building itself had been up since 1896 and was extended in 1980 to include a huge dance floor and a second bar which doubles as a platform for local musicians to beat up their instruments.
The Snow Creek has arguably the finest ceiling in all of Montana, protected as it is from the ravages of time by car enamel paint called Cadilliac Black. The ceiling is effectively offset with red neon piping that skirts the edges. License plates and photographs adorn any space that is left.
The place has become a living entity, whose personality is so split that it is comfortably a home to snow boarders, hippies, cowboys, bikers and tourists.
Once bitten by the Snow Creek, you never shy from it.
“I get emails from Germany and Australia,” said Carl. jr. “people want mementos of the place so I send them baseball caps, and they always send money.”
Carl. jr., is ever remindful of how the place looked when he originally clapped eyes on it.
“When I first came here, this bar had six bottles and that’s all,” he said. As the story goes, you couldn’t even order a screwdriver or even a vodka and 7 Up because there was no 7 Up or even orange juice.
The original frontage had two very dark and dingy windows and two old lamps lighting its way. The place was ready to fall and that was not all.
“It was covered in that old barn wood effect that was so popular in the 70s,” he said. “Even after removing that, there was the dry walling to get through.”
From a typical shrine to 70s tat, Carl. jr., glorified the old place in practically one afternoon with the help of a few friends. Since that time anybody who ventures past the entrance feels compelled to add their own interior design expertise and either carve their name into the bar or tables, or tack postcards, photos, even underwear to any piece of remaining wood or brick that can be seen.
“I pride myself in reversing the fortunes of bars,” said Carl jr.
The Snow Creek carries on a century of traditions on its mainstreet corner in Red Lodge. In fact, it may have surpassed even the glories of previous incarnations since it is now transformed into a mini-Sturgis on Harley Rodeo Days, complete with live bands in the street outside the venue.
