Wheeler, Montana BUCKHORN CLUB 50c Token- Rare-Unlisted

Here is part of what Ernie Pyle, famous WW 11 correspondent, had to say about Wheeler, Montana in the Washington Daily News of September 1, 1936. Note his mention of the BUCKHORN CLUB(in the 6th paragraph)...where the above token came from.

by Ernie Pyle

Wheeler, Mont.-You have to see the town of Wheeler to believe it.

When you drive through, you think somebody must have set up hand-painted store fronts on both sides of the road, as background for a western movie thriller. But it's real.

Wheeler is today the wildest wild-west town in North America. Except for the autos, it is a genuine throwback to the '80s, to Tombstone and Dodge City and Goldfield.

Wheeler is a slopover from the government-built city at Fort Peck Dam. It is not on government property, hence is free to go its own way. These boomtowns always mushroom up around a big construction project. There are 18 of them around Fort Peck.

They are shantytowns proper. They have such names as New Deal and Delano Heights. Their houses are made of boxes and tin cans and old boards and tar roofing. They look just like Hoover's famous Bonus Army camp of 1932 on the Anacostia Flats.

All except Wheeler. It is the metropolis of the mushroom villages. It has 3,500 people, and real houses and stores. It has 65 little businesses lining either side of the main street. Such places as "BUCKHORN CLUB" and "Rooms-SOC" and just "HOTEL."

It has nearly a thousand homes scattered back behind the main drag. It has half a dozen all-night taverns, and innumerable beer parlors. The taverns open at 8 in the evening and run 'til 6 in the morning.

At night the streets are a melee of drunken men and painted women, as they are called in books. Gambling and liquor by the drink are illegal in Montana. But Wheeler pays no attention. You can sit in a stud game, or keep ordering forty-rod all night.
The taverns don't have floor shows. You just drink and dance. The music goes 'til long after daylight.

You don't have to pay to dance with the girls, but they get a nickel a glass for all the beer and whiskey they induce the boys to buy.

Back behind Wheeler is a separate village where the women of easy virtue live. This town has an unprintable name. Everybody calls it by this name. They say a thousand women have heard the call and drifted in for the easy reapings among the dam workers.

Wheeler is two-and-a-half years old. It started with Fort Peck Dam, when some guy brought in a trailer, built bunks in it, and rented them to dam workers at $4 a week.

Ruby Smith was the first real settler. She started an eating place along the road, and within 30 days the town had sprung up around her almost to its present size.

Ruby now runs the Wheeler Inn, one of the biggest' all-night hot spots. She goes to bed at daylight and gets up late in the afternoon. She's coining the money.

Joe Frazier is the entrepreneur of Wheeler. Twenty years ago he homesteaded a batch of practically.......


The Buckhorn Club is listed as a Wheeler , Montana token in the Montana Token Book...but only in the 5¢ denomination. The 50¢ denomination is new.
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Regular Internet Token Store Price - $375/ Your Discount Price - $320