Harold's Cave Creek Corral has long billed itself as "the original Wild West Saloon and Restaurant," but back in the day, the proprietors took the roaring good time in a whole different direction.
Harold and Ruth Gavagan, who'd bought Cave Creek Corral in 1950 and added "Harold's" to the name, held daily a cowboy show in front of the restaurant for years, but decided to switch things up when a guy named Carl Mulhauser started working for the restaurant in the late '60s. Turns out, Mulhauser was a former circus lion tamer with connections to obtain some animals.
The Gavagans' daughter, Janet, was a teenager at the time and recalls her late parents' decision to let Mulhauser buy two or three lions and do a circus-style performance every afternoon. The animals lived in a cage right behind the restaurant.
"Prior to that, there was no thought of having lions or tigers, but it was a way to stand out from the other steakhouses in the Valley at the time," she says. "My dad was very inventive when it came to hiring people."
Mulhauser took care of the animals and did the shows for a couple of years, but when he moved on, so did the lions. A few years later, in the mid-'70s, he came back, this time performing with tigers. It was all over by the end of the decade, and nobody's quite sure whether the lions and tigers ended up in a zoo or a flashy Las Vegas show. But for some locals, it made a lasting impression.
Michael Seitts, a Scottsdale native who's spent plenty of time at Harold's over the years, says he's still amazed that anybody pulled it off.
"It was crazy," he says. "Like something out of Monty Python."
The animals are gone, but the restaurant's still around.
