Bale of Hay Saloon

The Bale of Hay claims origins around 1863, when the Alder Gulch gold strike made Virginia City a boomtown and Montana's territorial capital, though its own history traces the building's documented liquor trade to J.F. Stoer's business run by Henry Schwenk from 1869. In the 1890s, owners Smith and Boyd ran it fully as a saloon and named it the 'Bale of Hay' after the livery stable they owned next door. The building sat vacant for nearly four decades until preservationist Charlie Bovey acquired it in 1946, added the front porch, and reopened it as a working saloon. A 1983 fire destroyed the roof and rear of the building, which were rebuilt, and since 1997 the Montana Heritage Commission has owned the property (part of the state's $6.5 million purchase of the Bovey holdings), with operators running the saloon each summer.

Staff lore, reported by Cowboy State Daily in 2025, includes pool balls said to move on their own, a caved-in tunnel that allegedly once led to a nearby brothel, and a bullet hole in the wall from a gun that went off during a 1970s pool-game altercation.