#1857 - Valley Club, Cascade, ID - 8/21/2011

It's 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon and the Valley Club in Cascade is rollicking. Folks at the bar are yelling insults at the guys playing pool and vice versa. Raucous laughter can be heard as soon as you approach the baby blue cinder block building from outside. And it's not just a momentary thing -- it is a fairly continuous stream of laughter and shouts from raspy-voiced women and ornery old men.

Inside there are pictures of eagles and John Wayne on the walls.  There's a trainee bartender learning the ropes -- not some doe-eyed 22-year old, but a sixty-ish lady with great big hair and abundant blue-green eye shadow.  If you like a lively dive, this is clearly the place to be in Valley County.

The small town of Cascade now subsists largely on tourism, despite the recent bankruptcy of the lavish Tamarack Resort just across the Cascade Reservoir (now renamed "Lake Cascade" to better comport with the nature theme of the area's attractions), and despite the much larger tourist town of McCall lying some 30 miles north.  Many ranchers remain in the area, but the last of the lumber companies left when the Boise Cascade sawmill shut down in 2001, for lack of further timber resources made available by the U.S. government.  But the Valley Club is no tourist magnet, and that's a key to its greatness.

115 N Main St, Cascade, ID 83611 - (208) 382-3416
Est. 1946
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