Rawlins, Wyo., resident Ralph Penman remembers how people from around the region packed the pavilion on Saturday nights all summer.  They were drawn in by the music and the chance to dance on the bouncy floor. Groups of local teenagers often drove there, he says. “It was a good place to go. We knew most everyone there.” According to the old posters, the cost of admission was $2 for “gents” and $1 for ladies.

Hanna resident Robert Warburton, now deceased, recalled in a 2002 interview conducted by local historian Nancy Anderson, that the dances always drew huge crowds. Six deputies were stationed at various points in the bar, the dance hall and outside to help keep order. Warburton, who was in partnership with Jackson in the 1940s and 1950s, said that one night he counted 36 different state license plates on cars in the parking lot, and he remembered 56 different bands having performed at the pavilion over the years.

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Weekends were often tightly scheduled with a Saturday evening dance that began around 8 p.m. and continued until 3 a.m., followed by a Sunday afternoon rodeo and another dance after that. “Sometimes,” Warburton said, “I’d get up on Saturday morning and not go to bed again until Monday.”

There were usually one or two fights every Saturday night, Penman says. On May 18, 1946, one of those conflicts resulted in a tragedy. Two deputies tried to break up a number of fist fights that night and were knocked down in the process. Deputy Sheriff Claude Simmons of Hanna drew his gun to fire a warning shot in the air, but someone grabbed his arm and pushed it up. When his arm came down, his gun grip struck a person in the head. The gun discharged and the bullet struck and killed a bystander, 40-year-old John Milliken, Jr., of Hanna. Within the week, a coroner’s jury ruled Milliken’s death accidental, and Simmons was exonerated.  It was a week too late however, the sheriff had already left town to avoid the angry crowds blaming him for killing an innocent man.

The Jackson family retained ownership of the hotel for many years. When both the hotel and the pavilion were named to the National Register of Historic Places in the mid-1980s, the owners were a couple named Martin. In 1999, Peter Thieriot of California purchased the property.  Thieriot completely restored the hotel in an intensive two-year project during the early 2000's. It now offers 12 rooms, each with private bath, and a third-floor conference room where the attic once was located. The Garden Spot Pavilion was demolished for safety reasons.  Susan Prescott-Havers and her husband Arthur bought the hotel in 2007. In early 2020 Christine Ledder Neels bought the hotel and still offers exquisite dinning and a relaxing stay in one of the beautifully renovated rooms at the Historic Elk Mountain Hotel built in 1905.

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