Pastime Pool Hall

Built in 1903 as the Dodge House, this Whitefish building long served as a watering place and entertainment center, later becoming known as the Pastime bar for many years before being renamed the Bulldog Saloon in honor of the Whitefish Bulldog high school athletic teams in the early 1980s; as of 2002, it remained the Bulldog, a flamboyantly decorated sports bar. In the teen years of the twentieth century it was called Houston's Hall after Dr. Houston, a railroad physician and surgeon whose offices were on the second floor, and that floor later housed other doctors, was sometimes used for boxing matches, served as an early meeting place for Masons and the Order of the Eastern Star, and eventually fell into disrepair and became storage for city Christmas decorations and other items. During Prohibition, the main business survived by selling soft drinks, cigars, and fruit and by offering billiards and pool tables for local recreation, much of it patronized by railroaders. In 1933, J.L. Akey received a beer license as the new owner of the Pastime, and the Akey family remained associated with it for about fifty years, with Earl and Jacqueline Akey Schommer the last family members to run it before a later ownership change and its purchase by Linda and Buck May.

Whitefish, Montana · United States