Shooting Star Saloon
Huntsville, Utah · Gilded Age · Est. 1879 · Open today
Since 1879
The building went up around 1850 as a mercantile serving trappers, traders, herders, and Huntsville's early settlers, and in 1879 it became a saloon originally called Hoken's Hole (or Holken's Saloon) after owner Hoken Olsen. Olsen earned the nickname 'Slippery Olsen' — court records document arrests for selling liquor when it was outlawed during Prohibition, which is the basis of the bar's claim to continuous operation through that era. The saloon has had only about seven owners in its long history. Today it is a cash-only, 21-and-over burgers-and-beer institution whose ceiling is papered with signed dollar bills and whose walls hold the taxidermied head of Buck, a 289-pound St. Bernard.
The taxidermied head of Buck, a 289-pound St. Bernard reputed to have held a Guinness World Record for size before his death in 1953, watches over the bar — beneath a ceiling of signed dollar bills, a tradition said to have started with a customer heading off to World War II.
What to order: The Star Burger: two ground-beef patties and two slices of cheese with a grilled knackwurst Polish sausage split down the middle — served with chips and a cold beer, cash only.
How solid is the claim?
Utah’s oldest bar — the evidence
Shooting Star Saloon in Huntsville is our featured pick for the oldest bar in Utah, with a claimed founding year of 1879. Multiple independent sources (Intermountain Histories, KUTV, Utah Stories, Visit Ogden, Atlas Obscura) consistently identify it as Utah's oldest continuously operating saloon since 1879, with court records of founder Hoken Olsen's arrests for selling liquor during Prohibition actually supporting the continuity claim; no rival in-state claim was found. Falls short of 'Verified' only because 19th-century documentation from tiny Huntsville is thin, and the bar's broader 'oldest saloon west of the Mississippi' marketing claim is contradicted by older bars elsewhere (e.g., Nevada's Genoa Bar, 1853).