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Who is Rosie? The question most frequently asked by visitors to The Crooked Creek Saloon is the identity of the woman in red seductively reclining above the entrance to the bar. Her name is Rosie--a woman of distinguished character, possessed with a spirited appreciation for life. Legend has it that Rose, daughter of some of the valley's first homesteaders, turned to practicing the world's oldest profession after the death of some of her parents in the flu epidemic of 1898. An enterprising sort, Rosie soon opened her own dance hall and saloon and quickly developed a reputation among the railroad workers and loggers as a first class madame. While history (and the ski area) have chosen to remember Mary Jane as the valley's most famous working girl, discerning patrons from that time would surely argue that Rosie was without peer. Calamity struck, however, in the form of the Great Blizzard of '09. Trapped inside her saloon by the mounting drifts, Rosie, her girls, and several stranded customers inadvertantly caught the building on fire while stoking the furnace in an attempt to stave off the merciless cold for which Fraser is still very much famous. In the darkness, howling wind, and confusion of the fire, the tavern burned entirely to the ground. When the blizzard subsided, local townspeople, keen on burying the memory of their most disreputable establishment, quickly plowed the remains of the building under. To this day, the exact identities of those who perished with Rosie are still clouded in mystery. But true to the old saying "You can't keep a good spirit down", The Crooked Creek Saloon was built a quarter of a century later on the very site of Rosie's former domicile. From the earliest moments of the new saloon's existence, patrons and staff alike have claimed to see ghostly apparitions during the late night hours and particularly when the wind blows and the temperature drops. Near the stove in the back dining room, close to where most of the spectral sightings have occured, hangs what is purportedly the only known painting of Rose. Hidden away for years in the attic of a house once belonging to one of Rosie's most frequent admirers, the portrait was only recently discovered and graciously donated to the saloon. Whether the phantasms which frequent the back rooms of the bar are really the spirits of Rose and those who perished with her or merely the delusions of generations of over-imbibers, what is certainly true is that descendents of some of the valley's original homesteaders still haunt the bar at The Crooked Creek Saloon--a place where visitors can enjoy a few laughs, eat till it hurts, and drink till it feels better. Just as Rosie would have wanted! Crooked Creek Saloon & Eatery Design Copyright 2005 GrandCountyWeddings.com |
