Shrimp Fried Rice

Sometime in the 1930s, Joseph H. (Joe) Caulk began dreaming of building “a first-class nightclub” just outside of Miles City, Montana, a booming town in the southeastern corner of the state. Caulk, who was regarded as the local dance impresario as well as an authority on horses and horse racing, envisioned a mammoth log building with a stage and orchestra pit, a dance floor grand enough to be called a ballroom, a huge fireplace built from native stone, the longest bar anywhere near Miles City, and a large dining room flanked by a couple of private dining rooms. He even had a name for the place: The Jockey Club.

By 1940 Caulk had not only rounded up a partner or two but also found the perfect location for his nightclub at the intersection of U.S. Routes 10 and 12. (By one account, Ed Love, a local automobile dealer, invested in the enterprise so that his two daughters would have a place to dance.) Caulk hired Bluford Bly of Big Timber, some 200 miles to the west of Miles City, to build his roadhouse, and Byron Weldy, also of Big Timber, to build the rustic tables and chairs that would furnish its dining rooms. Bly had huge lodgepole-pine logs from the Gallatin Canyon cut especially for the project, including the eight massive tree trunks that, with two enormous truss beams, would support the roof.

Somewhere along the way Caulk settled on a new name for his nightclub—the Crossroads Inn—and ordered the 50-foot, two-face neon sign, said to be the largest in Montana, that would sit atop the building and beckon travelers on both highways.

The Crossroads Inn opened on June 27, 1941. The 60-seat dining room wasn’t yet finished, but the dance floor was a thing of beauty, built from solid maple and as smooth as a bowling alley. Caulk hired Orlando “Dutch” Vittorie, a native of Marseilles, France, as chef, and it was his food that helped to make the Crossroads Inn famous.

World War II brought big changes to Miles City. In 1942 Caulk traveled to Washington, D.C., with the president of the Miles City Chamber of Commerce and a group of local businesspeople to testify before members of the Senate Select Committee to Study Problems of American Small Business. He related how the owner of the Blue Ribbon Bakery in Miles City had been forced to shut down his business and apply to enlist in the U.S. Navy because all the bakers had been drafted into service. As a result, Caulk said, he had been forced to have his baked goods trucked in from Lewiston, Montana. “Does that alone—trucking bread 220 miles—fit into the scheme of savings tires?” Caulk asked the senators.

The war eventually would turn Caulk’s life upside-down. In 1946 he divorced his wife, moved to Silver Gate, and remarried. He put the Crossroads Inn up for sale, advertising it as the “most beautiful nightclub in Montana, and in 1947 Eddie J. Nicholson became its new owner. (Caulk went on to open Caulk’s Timberline Lodges at the Silver Gate entrance to Yellowstone National Park in 1948.)

In 1949 William F. Olsen, a local agent for the New York Life Insurance Company, bought the Crossroads Inn from Nicholson. (Nicholson went on to run the Roco Club in Hamilton, Montana, with Bruce Blahnik.) But by 1960 Olsen and his wife, Velma, had tired of operating the restaurant and put “Eastern Montana’s Finest Night Club,” as they described it, up for sale with an asking price of $100,000 for the entire property, land and all. While the Crossroads Inn was taking in an average of $200,000 a year, a classified ad they placed in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune offered this blunt reason for the sale: “Husband not interested in money or night club business.”

In 1961 the Olsens sold the Crossroads Inn to Lloyd and Francie Mackin, who operated it until 1974, when they sold it to Bob and Marlys Koehler. The Koehlers brought on Bill Coughlin (a fine chef in his own right) as general manager, and their children helped out at the restaurant, too. “As a kid, I bused tables, washed dishes, helped prepare salads and shrimp, and coat-checked,” Debbie Koehler Jurad recalls today. “Everyone dressed up, and the women wore fur coats. Those were the days!” The Koehlers operated the Crossroads Inn until 1980, when they sold it to Dale and Joanne Groskopf, who, just a few years later, would sell it to Rod Walter.

On October 20, 1984, the Crossroads Inn fell victim to an early morning fire that left little but charred timbers behind. The following day, a detective with the local police department received an anonymous tip to the effect that Walter had paid someone $8,000 to set the fire, and that cash registers had been removed from the inn before the fire was set. The tips led the detective and a colleague to the Pumpkin Creek Bridge, where they found several items that had come from the Crossroads Inn, including some receipts from its cash register. A jury later found Patrick Cain guilty of conspiracy to commit arson, and the conviction was upheld on appeal. After obtaining a warrant to search Cain’s car, the detectives found additional items from the Crossroads Inn. Cain confessed to burglarizing the Inn but denied that he had anything to do with the fire that destroyed it.

The Crossroads Inn was never rebuilt, and today the site it occupied is mostly an empty lot. But for many years afterward people in and around Miles City have reminisced about the Crossroads Inn with no small measure of reverence. “What a place it was,” one of them wrote in an online forum in 2005. “As long as I can recall the family went to the Crossroads every Sunday for the chuck wagon buffet. Then my grandmother would make me dance with her to the live music. I was responsible for the chits for the coat check. My grandfather would give me a half dollar to tip the check girl when I retrieved the coats. It was a wonderful place.”

Print Recipe

Shrimp Fried Rice

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Serves 6

The Crossroads Inn dominated the junction of U.S. Routes 10 and 12 in Miles City, Montana, from its opening in 1941 to 1984, when it fell victim to an early morning fire that left little but charred timbers behind. People in and around Miles City still reminisce about the Crossroads Inn, which was never rebuilt., with no small measure of reverence. William F. Olsen, the restaurant's second owner, provided its recipe for Shrimp Fried Rice to Ford Times magazine in 1953.

Ingredients

• 5 tablespoons (about 1/3 cup) rendered bacon fat or vegetable oil
• 2 cups (about 1/2 pound) medium raw shrimp, shelled and deveined
• 1 cup finely chopped green pepper
• 3/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 1/2 cup finely chopped celery
• 1 very small clove garlic, crushed
• 1/2 cup finely chopped mushrooms
• 4 cups cooked long-grain white rice, preferably cold and day-old
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped pimentos
• 4 tablespoons soy sauce

Instructions

1

Heat a very large nonstick or cast-iron skillet over high. Add the bacon fat or oil and shrimp. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the shrimp is no longer translucent and begins to turn golden at the edges, 2 to 4 minutes. With a slotted spoon, transfer the shrimp to a plate and set aside.

2

Add the green pepper, onion, celery, and garlic to the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened but still crunchy. Add the shrimp and mushrooms and cook another three minutes. Add the rice, pimentos, and soy sauce and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is hot.

3

Serve immediately.

Notes

This recipe has been adapted from the restaurant's original version, which called for cooked shrimp rather than raw shrimp. To use cooked shrimp, simply skip the first step and add the shrimp later, as directed.