Bear Creek Saloon and Steakhouse

The saloon and steakhouse was bought in 1982 by the DeArmond family, and at the time was only a bar. A kitchen was added and began serving Mexican food in 1984. The bar's main clientele is tourists, but due to the 1988 Yellowstone Fires there was a sharp downturn in tourism in 1988. The DeArmond family developed the idea of pig races to draw more customers to the area and started the races in 1992. In 1994 the menu was switched to a classic saloon and steakhouse, to which it remains today. Bobby "Pitts" was featured on ABC Good Morning America a couple of times during this period.

Legal battle

According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the DeArmond family held pig races for four years before being served with a cease and desist letter from the Montana Board of Horse Racing in 1992. The Board argued that recent drop in gambling revenue to the State was due partly "because of the pig racing operation and the relaxing of gambling laws." The board only had jurisdiction over pigs because of an older segment of law that gave them jurisdiction over racing of all animals

After the pig racing was shut down at the Saloon, business was down 60 percent. The DeArmond Family, along with the help of State Rep. Alvin Ellis Jr., found a loophole in the law that allowed sports pools, which led to the fund raising system and the use of betting cards. Ellis said the anti-pig-racing forces were "very heavy-handed, belligerent, and talked nonsense about things like doping (racing) pigs. They pretended not to know there's no way you can `fix' a pool-betting situation, where 20 of the 25 people on the board don't get anything because there's only five pigs racing." Eventually the DeArmond family won out and have been hosting pig racing ever since.