Alcohol has always been a taboo in Boulder City. When the town was created by a federal company in 1931, alcohol sales were not allowed. That policy stayed in place until 1969, well after the end of Prohibition.
Skinny Bar
That didn’t stop Hoover Dam workers from going just outside Boulder City limits to places like Railroad Pass Casino and Stagecoach Saloon. Based on a loosely documented history, the Stagecoach first opened in 1932, changed locations several times through the ’60s and closed on U.S. 93 around 2008.
“People would ride their Harleys in. There were gunfights in there. It was a rowdy kind of bar,” says Grant Turner, a born-and-raised Boulder City resident and restaurateur.
Year of the Snake cocktail
“I went in there with a buddy the night before it got torn down. ... A month later, I’m walking down the streets of Boulder City, and this guy pulls up in a flatbed truck, and he has the old antique wood bar. I’m 22. He says, ‘I’ll sell you this bar for $23,000.’ I don’t have $23,000. I don’t have anywhere to put a bar. I lamented never getting my hands on that bar.”
Long story short, Turner tracked down the bar at a trailer park years later, eventually bought it and set out to rehabilitate it for his new concept, Skinny Bar. But by some misunderstanding with one of his workers, “a bar from 1880 built in Norway that had gone around the world,” was accidentally cut into pieces.
“We ended up salvaging, completely rebuilding. The ornate stuff, we had to glue it onto a piece of wood and send it to this company for them to scan it and carve it out of white oak,” he says. “When you look at it, you wouldn’t know what’s original and what’s new. It just looks more beautiful than ever.”
The piece of history now serves as the centerpiece of Skinny Bar. And that’s not the only nod to Boulder City’s past.
On Skinny Bar’s rooftop, the Cement Slipper speakeasy’s name was inspired by stories of mob assassination tactics, which resurfaced in 2022 when a barrel with human remains was found washed up on Lake Mead’s shores.
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