| Bear Creek Downs | |
|---|---|
| Restaurant information | |
| Website | http://www.redlodge.com/bearcreek/ |
Bear Creek Saloon and Steakhouse is a restaurant in the small town of Bear Creek, Montana. It is family owned by Pits (Bobby) & Lynn DeArmond since it was purchased in 1982. The restaurant houses fund raising pig races throughout the year that uses full grown pigs in the summer and piglets in the winter. The Carbon County Health Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversee the health and condition of the pigs. It was involved in a lengthy legal battle over the legality of pig races with the Montana Board of Horse Racing, and it was eventually made legal in House Bill 433 in 1993. It is located seven miles outside of the city of Red Lodge, Montana [1]
History
editThe saloon and steakhouse was bought in 1982 by the DeArmond family, and at the time was only a bar. They added a kitchen and began serving Mexican food in 1984. During the early years the bar had concerts, pool tournaments and other normal bar functions. Their main draw was tourists, and during the 1988 Yellowstone Fires there was a sharp downturn in tourism. The DeArmond family came up with the idea of pig races to draw more customers to the area. In 1994 the menu was switched to a classic saloon and steakhouse, with burgers and steaks being the focal point.
Pig Races
edit
The pig races are the main attraction at the Bear Creek Saloon. As told by the Füd Report from Montana[2] The racetrack is a short oval that is surrounding a golden statue of a pig, set up like a "minor league stadium" . The pigs start in a gate much like horse racing, and each race starts with the playing of "The Call to the Post" over a loudspeaker. The gate is then opened and the racers are off, speeding around the track in around 8 seconds [3]. All of their hard racing is rewarded by vegetables on the other end of the oval, which the racers get to enjoy after the race. There are a total of 12 races each night, one every 15 minutes, and each race has five pigs racing. [4]
The pigs are provided by a local 4-H club[5] , and each pig can be purchased by a sponsor every racing season. The sponsor then gets to name the pig and have a jersey made for it. The pig's names can be anything and some in the past have been "Pumpkin Butt", "Raquel Belch", "Knuckles", "Pig O'War", "Ursowla Hamdress", and "Notta Hot Dog". [5]After the racing season is over the sponsor has the option of donating the slaughtered pig to charity or to keep the meat themselves. Sponsors also have the option of putting up billboards for their group or company around the racetrack, adding to the "stadium" effect. Some sponsors in the past have been the Riverboat Casino in Billings,Montana, the U.S. Bank in Red Lodge, Shipton's Big R ranch supplies in Billings, and Maxwell's restaurant in Cody, Wyoming.[5] The Carbon County Health Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversee the health and condition of the pigs.[5]
Recently the racing has become a year round event. In December 2003 the DeArmond family came up with the idea to host indoor pig races in the winter season, using a custom built racetrack on the stage inside the Saloon. The piglets are all between 5-6 weeks old and they race until they get to be 10-12 weeks old because they simply get too big for the custom track. The DeArmond family discovered that to get the pigs to run they use milk, and Pits DeArmond says “They run like heck to milk.” [6] Just like the summer racing, betting for fund raising is available.
Betting for Fund Raising
editThe idea of holding pig races is not just an attraction, it also is a fund raiser. Each race has a betting card assigned to it, which has a total of 25 spots. In the first eleven races, any spot can be purchased for $2. In the final race, each spot can be purchased for $5. This brings the total to $50 a betting card for the earlier races and $125 for the final race.
The betting proceeds with Racemaster Pits DeArmond asking for a volunteer, who rolls a pair of five sided dice. The first die has the letters A-E on a side, and the second die has the numbers 1-5 on a side. The betting card has columns A through E and rows 1 through 5, and the dice being creates a specific spot on the card. The first roll determines who "owns" the first pig in that race, the second roll determines who "owns" the second pig and so on. After all five pigs have been assigned the race proceeds and the winning pig's owner claims their prize. The prize is $25 for the first eleven races, and $100 for the final race.
Fund raising is part of every race, with the remaining $25 being donated to local scholarships to Carbon County students. Over $77,000 has been raised to date. [1]
Legal Battle
editAccording to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the DeArmond family held pig races for four years before being served with cease and desist from the Montana Board of Horse Racing in 1992. The Board argued that recent drop in gambling revenue to the State was due partly because of the small pig racing operation and the relaxing of gambling laws.[5] At the time Horse Racing was making $6 million for the State of Montana, and the board only had jurisdiction because of an older segment of law that gave them jurisdiction over racing of all animals [5]
After the pig racing was shut down, business was down 60 percent.[5] State Rep. Alvin Ellis Jr. was the main proponent for the Bear Creek Downs, and with his aid the DeArmond family found a loophole in the law that allowed sports pools, which lead to their system of betting cards and half the proceeds going to local scholarships.[5] Ellis said the anti-pig-racing forces were "very heavy-handed, belligerent, and talked nonsense about things like doping (racing) pigs. They pretended not to know there's no way you can `fix' a pool-betting situation, where 20 of the 25 people on the board don't get anything because there's only five pigs racing."[5] Eventually the DeArmond family won out and have been hosting pig racing ever since.
Bobby "Pitts" Dearmond was borned and raised in Spearman, Texas (Hansford County) before moving to Montana in the late 1970s.
References
edit- ^ a b http://www.redlodge.com/bearcreek/
- ^ http://www.fudcourt.com/montana.html
- ^ http://www.flickr.com/photos/den-s/2814550476/
- ^ http://www.virtualmontana.com/montanadirectory/montanalistings/YC/montana8670.htm
- ^ a b c d e f g h i http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1993/9308100027.asp
- ^ http://goredlodge.com/gorl/archivegorl/1203.html