First, a warning. If you are watching your weight, this edition of Nevada Yesterdays may be a tough one for you.
Twenty-five years ago, The Green Shack closed. The sign still stands on East Fremont Street where it is turning into Boulder Highway. The memories linger, too.
The restaurant opened in 1930 as the Colorado. A woman named Mattie Jones, known as Jimmie, was the boss. She and her husband had been in business in Taft, California. After her husband died in 1928, she moved to Las Vegas and bought land. She sold food out of a window of her home on the trail to the river. She bought a building from the Union Pacific—an old barracks. She had the building moved to the site in 1932. About that time, it became The Green Shack because the building was green. Jones added to the building within a decade, with a new canopy to follow around 1960. Jones’s nephew Frank McCormick took over from her, then his wife Elaine, and then their son Jim and his wife Barbara. They ran it until they had to close it.
Workers commuting to the dam loved the food, and so did generations to follow. The Green Shack had a full menu but specialized in fried chicken and mashed potatoes. The bread pudding was well known, too. For its first three years, it also served bootleg whiskey.
When Prohibition ended, The Green Shack got the first new local liquor license.
It had a lot of famous customers. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin worked their way over there from the Strip. So did a local builder named Benjamin Siegel. Old western movie star Hoot Gibson would eat there, coming over from his ranch, called the D-Four-C since it catered to people seeking divorces.
It was also a hangout for locals. The bar association regularly met there, from the Foleys and the McNamees in the 1930s onward. Politicians frequented it, including me! The Lions Club celebrated getting its charter there. The American Legion met there. Auto dealer Jim Marsh held his company’s Christmas parties there. Families went there for reunions, anniversary celebrations, New Year’s events, special Thanksgiving and Christmas meals, and dinner parties. Its western theme, comfortable chairs, and fireplace made for a great atmosphere.
It wasn’t always calm. Its bartender, Curley Teel, was convicted of murdering a dam worker in 1932. The Green Shack was accused of selling liquor to minors at one point. It went on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, but that didn’t bring in more customers as Las Vegas expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods and new places to try. Then came the sad day on May 30, 1999, when Jim and Barbara McCormick taped a handwritten sign to the door: “The Green
Shack is closed after nearly 70 years of business. Thank you for being part of our lives.”
For longtime Las Vegans, what’s left are the memories …. the cast-iron skillets—eight of them that Mrs. Jones used when she opened and were still there when it closed. And the fried chicken made with flour, salt, poultry seasoning, and white pepper before being fried in lard. It’s been 25 years but we can still taste it. See, we TOLD you this would be a tough one for dieters.