(Fremont County, WY) – It was simply called the “Bowling Alley.” There wasn’t any confusion, since it was the only one in Fremont County. It opened early in 1904 at the Coalter’s Opera House at 303 Main Street.
W.N. Coalter was a man ahead of his time with a short order cook, billiard tables, music and even a wine tasting room. He had four bowling lanes installed on the first floor.
Coalter was a businessman as well, looking to squeeze the maximum profit from his various enterprises, but he had problems getting the bowling alley promoted.
Bowling was a growing sport nationwide. It was advertised as excellent exercise and a way of preventing appendicitis and other intestinal ailments. Coalter used that approach, but the miners, cowboys and sheepmen of early Lander weren’t buying.
He switched to attracting women to bowl.
Lander Clipper – May 13, 1904 – “Last Wednesday was Ladies’ Day at the Lander Bowling Alley, but for some unaccountable reason but few attended. It is hoped that on the next day. May 18, which is to be devoted to the fair sex, that more will respond. It is the intention of the management to interest the ladies of Lander in a harmless and profitable exercise both amusing and highly entertaining. Nothing will be allowed about the hall to offend any patron and only gentlemen escorting lady companions will be admitted on these important days.”
That didn’t work either. Coalter began offering a monthly $5 prize for the woman with the highest score in a 30-day period, equal to $175 today, a substantial prize, but it didn’t generate the numbers he’d hoped for. In 1905, he removed the lanes and converted the space to a dance floor.
Over a century later, only two bowling alleys remain in Fremont County. The newest, Nana’s Bowling and Bakery in Dubois opened September 18, 2021, with eight synthetic surfaced lanes, an arcade, bakery and restaurant.
Lander’s Silver Spur Lanes opened in 1960 and remains a popular location for league bowling with a few times a week set aside for opening bowling.
In between the Bowling Alley and Nanas there were many other alleys throughout Fremont County. Riverton sported five in its history, Lander four, and one each in Hudson, Shoshoni and Jeffrey City.
In February 1917, George Crowder and Walter Mitts leased the basement of the Lawer Building, now part of OMB Bank on Main Street and installed four lanes along with card tables, pool tables and a billiard table. They sold cigars, tobacco and candy near the entrance of the business.
Crowder and Mitts used the same advertising campaign as Coalter tried the decade before.
Lander Eagle & Riverton Chronicle – February 8, 1917 – “Bowling is one of the most healthful
and interesting games possible and it has often been desired that this town had an alley. They will undoubtedly meet with liberal patronage. It is understood that the proprietors will set apart a time each week for the ladies, so that they also may participate in this game.”
It became known as Mitz’s Bar and lasted just a few years until Prohibition ended the legal bars and saloons of Fremont County.
Prohibition created “Speakeasy’s” illegal bars from coast to coast. Every town in Fremont County had their fair share, and farms near Shoshoni and Moneta thrived with moonshine stills distilling illegal liquor.
The Riverton Bowling Alley opened in the early 1930s, next door to the Hays General Store on the corner of Main and Broadway.
It was once again a basement alley with four lanes.
The late Bob Peck, co-publisher of the Riverton Ranger with his brother Roy worked there as young teenager as a pin setter.
Bob relayed the story that it was smokiest job on the planet, with cigar smoke so thick it was hard to see the pins. His mother made him shower and leave his clothes outside when he got home.
C.A. Brown purchased the business in July 1953, changing the name to Brown’s Bowling Alley. He introduced semi-automatic pin setters and had a men’s league of 32 teams in 1955.
Bernie Harris of Riverton was a champion bowler, winning the city title many times and the Wyoming championship a few times as well.
Brown set up an exhibition match between Harris and Pro Bowling Association Champion Bill Lillard of Houston, Texas in the late 1950s.
The alley was filled with fans. Harris bowled well, but Lillard won the match. Roy Peck wrote a detailed story in the Ranger with photographs of the event.
A strong economy used to lead to bowling alleys, restaurants and movie theaters arriving in small towns, a weakening economy closed them just as fast.
Hartman’s, now the Alchemy offered bowling on the second floor at the Recreation Club – h/t Pioneer Museum
From 1937 to 1942 the Recreation Club offered bowling on the second floor of the H.S. Hartman Building in Lander. Hartman opened the business but sold it to D.B. Burlingame in 1941. With money tight and many young men heading off to World War II, the alley soon closed.
Hudson boomed in both World Wars and in 1946, the Hudson Bowling Alley opened on Main Street. It featured four wooden lanes with hand set pins.
R.E. Housley built and owned the alley, but it only lasted six years, closing in 1952.
A third and final bowling alley opened on Main Street in Riverton around 1950.
Sportsman’s Bowl and Lounge featured eight lanes. In 1959 pinsetters were replaced by Brunswick Automatic pin setting machines.
The location on 611 East Main was the final one in the old downtown area of Riverton.
It closed around 1965, with Lew and Arlyne Diehl the last owners.
Uranium and iron mining created a booming economy in Fremont County in the late 1950s through 1983.
In 1960, Silver Spur Lanes opened in Lander. It was a huge hit for the community.
With 10 lanes it held many state tournaments, had room for rapidly growing bowling leagues and was filled from opening to closing each night.
Silver Spur Lanes Today – h/t Randy Tucker 
In 1994, in collaboration with Star Lite Lanes of Riverton, they hosted the 46th Annual Wyoming Men’s Bowling Tournament.
Star Lite Lanes arrived in 1961. It was the largest bowling alley at the time with 12 lanes. A Brunswick alley, it featured automatic pin setting, overhead marques, an adjoining bar at the Star Lite Lounge and a snack bar.
Bill Scarlett and Roy Scott at the Silver Spur Lanes – h/t Pioneer Museum and other images of Silver Spur Lanes
It was a haven for teenagers from across the county, but it thrived on men’s and women’s league bowling.
Bowling, like softball in the summer, and city league basketball boomed with approximately 4,000 miners, mostly young men with families working in uranium mines in the Gas Hills.
Paul Corey and Joann Corey, owners of the West Drive-In eventually partnered with Reno Long in running the Star Lite.
In 1985, the 37th Annual Wyoming Men’s State Bowling Tournament held the Team Event at the Star Lite here in conjunction with the Doubles and Singles Event at Valley View Lanes.
The business thrived until 2007, when it was demolished for business expansion on North Federal Boulevard.
Star Lite Lanes – images of days gone by – h/t Wyoming Bowling Center 
Just 22 miles to the north, Shoshoni Restaurant and Bowling Alley opened in 1952. It rode the economic surge created by hundreds of men and their families working to construct the new Boysen Dam between 1947 and 1953.
A four lane bowling alley with a restaurant in Shoshoni – h/t 1982 Shoshoni High School Annual
When the workers left, the Restaurant and Bowling Alley continued to thrive. It was a popular spot in the 1960s and 70s for teenagers from rural Fremont County, Riverton and Thermopolis to meet in a central location.
The nearby A&W Restaurant made it an attractive spot on Friday and Saturday nights throughout the year.
The business continued into the 1980s, but a water leak flooded the alleys, buckling the wood beyond repair.
It closed in 1983, with a liquidation auction that sent the trademark blue lockers and all of the bowling pins to Rose Lanes in Lovell.
Two more alleys rode the economic surf of the 1960s and 70s and one more closed just before the boom hit.
The Lander Bowl A Way was opened in 1948 at 133 North Second by Don Burns. He moved the business two blocks a year later to 313 North Second and sold it Frank Hall in 1950.
Bob Williams worked as a pinsetter in the original Bowl A Way while a high school student. Bob was from Dubois, but they didn’t have a high school so kids from the High County boarded in Lander for school after junior high.
Bob and his wife Soni met while competing in steer shows in high school and were married in 1963.
“The Dubois Bowling Alley was in the grocery store building,” Soni said. “When I first came to Dubois and the bowling alley was already there.”
A bowling alley in a tiny mountain town like Dubois might seem an economic risk, and many naysayers claimed it would never be profitable, but Warren Beck and some other investors built a quality, four-lane bowling alley and people from Crowheart to Togwottee flocked to it.
“When they built that bowling alley, everyone that knew anything about Dubois said it wasn’t big enough to support a bowling alley, “Soni said. “When we first came Bob and I bowled up there often. It was four lanes, a real, legitimate bowling alley.”
The business closed sometime in the late 1960s and was vacant for a while.
“It sat empty for a while until they put a grocery store in there,” Soni said. “When they first opened the grocery store, they had a sign to watch your step where the counter and shoes were kept.”
Dubois Super Foods has been extensively remodeled and little evidence of the bowling alley remains.
“The Dubois Bowling Alley was a great place to meet people,” Soni said.
The Bowl A Way featured six lanes, automatic pin setters, and a snack bar. True to form, they tried to cater to women’s leagues and especially the many young wives with families moving to town with their husbands who were working in the Atlantic City Iron Mine.
The Bowl A Way was the first, and possibly only Fremont County bowling alley to offer free babysitting.
It closed in 1962 and the lanes were moved one more time, this time 60 miles east to the boom town of Jeffrey City.
In 1963, Keith Purinton opened Sage Lanes with the six lanes formerly at the Bowl A Way. It thrived during Jeffrey City’s golden age when the town expanded to a population of 4,000 with a K-12 school enrolling over 600 students and various bars, movie theaters, restaurants, grocery stores and motels lining the highway.
League bowling was big with the uranium workers in their free time and a large snack bar brought in teenagers.
Bowling in a ghost town – Sage Lanes – Jeffrey City – h/t Randy Tucker
Stogie and Edna Norris purchased it and kept it open until 1988, despite the desperate times that befell the little town once the uranium market collapsed.
Of all the defunct bowling alleys in Fremont County, only Sage Lanes looks ready for someone to turn on the power and open it up. The equipment looks functional as do the lanes and upholstered furniture in the lobby.
The Valley View was the final tournament quality bowling alley in Fremont County.
When it opened in 1975, it was a showcase of bowling technology. Brunswick Astroline pin setters made for rapid play on its 16 well lit, maple lanes. It offered a short order quality snack bar, a full service bar and a steak house on the east side of the building with a tremendous view of the Wind River Mountains and Wind River Valley, hence the name, “Valley View.”
Vi and Van Vandenbrook owned the alley with Wade and Carol House joining as co-owners in 1979.
The Valley View closed in 1985 but reopened the following year. David and Georgie Sours managed it until it closed in 1993.
The first woman to break 200 in Fremont County came in 1939, by 1994 there were many more.
From an opera house barely removed by a few years from the Old West to a modern high-tech facility with automatic scoring, and a venerable establishment with six decades of competition and enjoyment behind it, the world of bowling continues in sections of Fremont County.
A dozen alleys once graced the people of Shoshoni, Riverton, Hudson, Lander and Dubois with nightly competition, friendship and socializing.
Now only two remain, and the 7-10 split is still the impossible standard to meet.