Wyoming’s Occidental Hotel Featured on American Dream TV

A new episode of American Dream TV featuring The Occidental Hotel and The Busy Bee officially aired over the weekend.

Reaching over 30 million viewers monthly, ADTV is a national show, 2x Emmy-nominated, that airs in major cities across the country. They are featured on premier networks and streaming platforms like HGTV, the Travel Channel, Bloomberg, Tubi (owned by Fox), and YouTube Movies & TV.

Founded in 1880 in Buffalo, Wyoming, the Occidental Hotel is a premier, restored Wild West landmark near the Bighorn Mountains and Bozeman Trail. Originally a tent city saloon, it became a renowned stop for figures like Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, and Butch Cassidy. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, it offers authentic, preserved 1900s-era rooms.

You can watch the episode featuring Wyoming's Occidental Hotel in the video below.

The beds at the Occidental Hotel have hosted a remarkable array of guests. Future presidents stayed there before taking office, Ernest Hemingway wrote part of a novel in its rooms, and legendary figures like Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid, and Calamity Jane spent the night more than once. It’s even where The Virginian found his man.

Over the years, the hotel has passed through many owners, often under colorful circumstances. Cowboy poet Dan Hess captured one particularly legendary transfer in verse:

"She was lost one night, in a Poker Game
By a man with a Second-best Hand."

In its heyday, the Occidental was famous for high-stakes poker. One early visitor described the saloon as “a regular gambling hell,” where games sometimes raged for days, drawing players from near and far.

Buell owned and operated the hotel until 1919, when he lost it in a high-stakes poker game to J.R. Smith. But Smith did not seem so interested in running the business venture himself. It was Smith’s daughter-in-law, Margaret, who ran the hotel for 59 years.

I've done a lot of digging on this story and, sorry to say, not much is written about that night other than what you have already read above. There was a game, Buell lost. That's it.

Imagine being there that night in the old west saloon where the tension in the room was as thick as the cigar smoke, just before the cards were laid out on the table and the winner was revealed.

BUT...is there anything to the poem above by Mr. Hess? The winner was the man with the second-best hand. If true, then the winner of the hand was bluffing. -- What do you think?