Reddit mentions of Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology And History In Virginia City (Shepperson Series in Nevada History)

Ad additional word about sources, popular perception and folklore about the Western saloon.

From the start, there was an assumption that the "Wild West" was, well, rather wild, and there was a perception that its saloons were the most wild of all. This early 1860s depiction of a saloon was crafted for an Eastern audience (it appeared in Harper's Weekly) and it was far removed from reality, but it contributed to a popular image of the Western saloon that survives to this day. It is true that when one combines youth, male hormones, and alcohol there will be occasional violence, but primary sources attest to businesses that were proud to offer safe environments to customers of all sorts, including respectable women and their children (many saloons also offered sodas and food).

Quality of products varied, and without federal controls (there was an excellent - unfortunately-deleted - answer dealing with how slow federal standards were to be imposed on whiskey production. But people were people, and they sought out the best products and scorned the worst.

Elliott West wrote the classic treatment (by an esteemed, professional historian) in 1979 - The Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier. Kelly Dixon, who directed two of our excavations and worked with the entire collection, wrote the excellent Boomtown Saloons (2006) - an adaptation of her PhD dissertation. I then picked up the subject with my synthesis/retrospective of 30 years of working with this and other material: Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past (2012).