What is the Buffalo Chip Saloon?
The Buffalo Chip is the reason a lot of Scottsdale visitors drive to Cave Creek, and the reason a lot of them come back. It is a big, loud cowboy saloon on the town’s saloon strip, across Cave Creek Road from Harold’s Corral, and twice a week it does something no bar in Scottsdale does: live bull riding in an outdoor arena out back. Every Wednesday and Friday, gates open at 6 p.m., tickets are $10 cash, and real riders get on real bulls a few yards from the rail where you are holding your beer.
The rest of the week it is a country bar that takes dancing seriously. Free lessons run four nights (line dancing Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday, couples two-step Thursday), and the house band, Pick O’ the Litter, plays Tuesday through Saturday at 8. The kitchen does Texas-style barbecue, the kind of food you eat with a beer at a picnic table.
The Chip dates its place in Cave Creek to 1998, when Larry Wendt took over an older roadhouse. On Thanksgiving 2015 a fire burned the saloon down. The arena survived, and the town more or less insisted on the rebuild; the Chip reopened about a year later in a building made to look like the one it lost. It is the best night in the north Valley that involves livestock.
How to do a bull-riding night
Get there. About 40 minutes from Old Town with no traffic: north on Scottsdale Road to the Carefree Highway, west to Cave Creek Road, then north into town. The Chip is on the saloon strip, across from Harold’s. If you plan to drink, book a ride home; Cave Creek Road at 11 p.m. is not where you want to be guessing.
Buy tickets right. Bull-riding tickets are $10 a person, cash only, sold at the gate on the night, first come, first served, and the whole party has to be in line. A dinner reservation does not guarantee a ticket. Gates open at 6 p.m.; arrive by then on a Friday or in the cool months.
Know the rounds.
- Wednesday: rounds at 7:30 and 9 p.m.
- Friday: rounds at 8, 9:30 and 10:45 p.m., with mutton bustin’ (small children riding sheep) after the first round. Friday is the bigger crowd.
VIP seating overlooking the arena is booked through the events team at events@buffalochipsaloon.com.
Eat early. Dinner reservations are taken by phone at (480) 488-9118, and the saloon recommends them on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Order the barbecue, brisket first, and eat before the first round, because nobody wants to be in line at the window when the chute opens.
Dance. Free lessons from 7 to 8 p.m.: line dancing Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday, two-step Thursday. Take the lesson, then stay for the band at 8. DJ Dennis plays Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights.
Bring kids, carefully. Under-21s must be with a parent or guardian 21 or older, one adult for every two minors, and minors must be off the property by 10 p.m., with entry closing at 9:30. Adults need a physical ID; digital IDs are not accepted.
Make a day of it. Hike Spur Cross or Cave Creek Regional Park in the morning, walk Frontier Town in the afternoon, and time dinner for the first round. For the full country circuit, see our country bars and line dancing guide and the weekly calendar.
The saloon Scottsdale lost and Cave Creek kept
Scottsdale used to have places like this. Pinnacle Peak Patio, Reata Pass and Greasewood Flat were the far-north cowboy nights, and all three were gone by the mid-2010s. In Old Town the Rusty Spur still pours, but it is a small room with a band, not a night out with an arena. The Western Scottsdale sells on its signs now lives, in practice, half an hour up the road, in a town that incorporated in 1986 precisely to keep that kind of life possible.
Cave Creek Road between the town’s two ends is a saloon strip: Harold’s Corral, which has poured drinks in one form or another since the 1930s; the Horny Toad; the Hideaway; and the Buffalo Chip. Among them, the Chip found the act nobody else could copy. Bull riding in a ring behind a bar is the kind of thing that sounds like a tall tale until you are standing at the rail on a Wednesday, and it has made the Chip the headquarters of the town’s rodeo culture; it hosts the kickoff dance for Cave Creek Rodeo Days every spring.
The fire is the part of the story locals tell. On Thanksgiving 2015 the saloon burned to the ground. The outdoor arena survived, and the Chip kept serving from it while the building was rebuilt, then reopened about a year later in a structure made to look like the old one. The bar is also known as an unofficial Green Bay Packers bar on fall Sundays, which is a strange thing to find in the Sonoran Desert and entirely in character.
What has changed since is mostly scale. The schedule has grown to bull riding twice a week, five nights of the house band, four nights of free lessons and a DJ on the busy nights, and the policies (cash at the gate, physical IDs, minors out by 10) read like a place that has learned how many people it can hold.
Honest assessment: it is a tourist draw as much as a local bar, the barbecue is honest rather than destination, and on a spring Friday the line and the crowd are real. But nothing else within an hour of Scottsdale gives you a bull ride, a two-step lesson and a band in one evening for a ten-dollar bill.