Mike and Janet own the cabin compound across from us in Lake Tahoe. Knowing our path West, they invited us to camp in their driveway and took us on a mini tour of their hometown- Rio Vista. A city rich in history, but with us having limited time, we made one very unique stop- drinks at Foster's Bighorn.
I have to agree with the description I read on atlas obscura, "Over 300 taxidermied animals in a Californian restaurant make for a taxidermist's dream and an animal lover's nightmare."
At the turn of the last century, the American public was transfixed by exotic places and their exotic animal inhabitants, and clamored to get glimpses of big game creatures in the nation’s newly established zoological parks in the Bronx, Washington, and San Diego. Bill Foster wanted to give the public a taste of African wildlife, but he had a different vision of how to share the continent’s beasts with the world. He preferred his animals dead to alive.
Foster became a passionate large game hunter himself, and through the 1920s and 30s, he made eight trips to Africa and 10 to Canada and Alaska, bringing back hundreds of large game specimens to be taxidermied. Foster paid for these trips with the fortune he made as a prohibition-era bootlegger. Back home in 1931, he finally settled down and opened a bar to showcase his more than 300 taxidermy trophies.
There is so much to see in this darling town, we've made promises to return and stay for days. Even then, it probably won't be enough time.
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1 comments:
We had great visit with you two in Rio Vista, missing you in Tahoe. We will be leaving Thursday for our youngest son’s birthday, then off to Rypon for Kennedy Family Reunion, Palm Springs for my cousin’s husbands 93 birthday, visit our friends from Mexico, visit my exchange sister from Uruguay, she is here visiting her baby sister whom lives in San Diego, picking up our friends from Idaho for a surprise 70th bday…hope to be back home around the 13-14th of June.
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