With sweat and anger dripping from their faces, two cowboys burst through a saloon’s swinging doors onto a dusty road to settle a score.

Back-to-back, they step off three paces ... and turn.

Bang-Bang!

Slow on the draw, one cowboy falls to the ground.

The watchful sheriff unholsters his six-shooter and blasts the winning pistoleer.

Meanwhile, a man on the balcony above – claiming to be the new sheriff in town – picks off the lawman with a long gun.

Frontier justice, Ogallala-style, ends as a saloon girl yanks a pistol from her garter belt and fires the final shot.

And with the smell of gun smoke still hanging in the air, saloon patrons gathered in groups now casually step over the victims onto the boardwalk and through the swinging doors. The show inside is about to begin.

This scene plays out seven summer nights a week at Ogallala’s Front Street and has been for nearly 60 years. A cast of high-kicking showgirls, cowboys and young local actors perform Nebraska’s longest-running summer stock theater, called the Crystal Palace Revue.

Front Street is a historic-looking frontier town established by five Ogallala businessmen in 1964. The Revue is the main draw to Front Street. Visitors also enjoy steaks and drinks at the steakhouse and saloon, lighter fare at the cafe, and explore history in Front Street’s general store, gift shop and museum. Next to a stagecoach, a 30-foot-tall wooden cowboy silhouette offers a friendly wave to motorists on U.S. Highway 30.

Ogallala once had the nickname “Gomorrah of the Plains.” Violence and debauchery were rampant here in the 1870s after Union Pacific made Ogallala a significant beef shipping location.

The trouble was not the passengers on the iron rails but rather the Texas Trail cowboys starved of wine, women and song after months on the trail. Cowboys, Oregon Trail pioneers and soldiers solved their altercations with fists and firearms. Sometimes the fights involved the seasonal saloon girls and prostitutes who flocked in droves to Ogallala.

Those wild days ended in Ogallala in the 1880s when Texas cattle became diseased and were banned from the Plains, but today’s Crystal Palace Revue keeps that era alive. Thirty-one actors, ages 14 to 21, present a humorous and clean show with song, dance, history and audience participation.

Fortune smiled on Front Street after Ogallala veterinarian Darlan “Doc” Rezac – the last of the original investors – put the business up for sale in 2016. Doc was making arrangements for an auction with no takers when locals Stacey and Kathleen (Kat) Bauer entered stage right to purchase it. Kat grew up at Front Street, and her mom has photos of her on stage. With such a history and importance to the community, Kat and Stacey say they couldn’t bear to see it auctioned off and broken up. The 2022 season marks the Revue’s 59th year, thanks to the Bauers. 

Piano player DeVere Larington has been tickling the ivories for a half-hour when the attendees return to the Crystal Palace Saloon for beers and Nebraska beef steak suppers. Longhorn cattle heads and photos of past casts adorn the walls. A sign above the piano reads, “Please don’t shoot the piano player. He’s the slowest gun in the West,” but Larington is quick on the keys with old-time music.

He started playing piano at age 7. Through a coincidence that began with his family donating their upright piano to Front Street, Larington entertains the crowd by playing on the very same piano he learned as a child.

Decked out in a derby hat, silk vest and clip-on bowtie, the 21-year-old music major at the University of Nebraska-Kearney looks the part of a saloon entertainer. Last year, with an overflowing crowd, three cowboys were about to begin singing “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie” when DeVere realized he didn’t have the sheet music. The cowboys adapted as Larington fingered “The Battle of Boot Hill” until noticing the correct score on top of the piano.

Toward the end of the season, the cast pulled one audience member on stage. It had been a great show, but it upset one audience member. “This woman runs up and starts hooting and hollering,” Larington said. “She insulted one of our showgirls.” Like it or not, hangings, gunfights, and saloon girls are all part of Ogallala’s history.

Paxton third-grade teacher and One Act Troup instructor Tomas England started with the Crystal Palace Revue as a cast member years ago and now serves as the show’s director. Some of his students are regulars in the Revue.

Many of the songs and skits have been performed for decades. England replaces one piece each season and mixes up the dances – “but only a little,” he said. “Our locals like things kept the same,” he said.

Each performance is “loosely scripted,” he said. It encourages his actors to ad-lib – even when the production takes a painful turn, like when the piano player picked up his bench to fend off a gun-wielding miscreant. The player dropped the oak bench on 20-year-old Rachel Orth’s foot. Blood started running in her shoe.

“When something like that happens, you keep acting,” Orth said. “The crowd just thinks it is part of the show.”

People have told Orth that she is less reserved than when she began acting in the production in 2018. The Ogallala Senior High School graduate feeds off the crowd’s energy, and it’s a great conversation starter in real life “to tell people that I work as a showgirl each summer.” 

Another saloon girl, this one with the Ace of Hearts visible in her garter, pops on stage and asks the crowd where they are from. Audience members yell out South Dakota, Nevada, Virginia and Washington. Fans from all 50 states and about 30 countries attend throughout a typical mid-May to early-August theater season. This night’s crowd, like many, are mostly Lake McConaughy visitors from Colorado.

Three past cast members have gone on to become Miss Nebraska. Another actor, Joshua Cody, is royalty here. He went on to star in the Netflix original film Santa Girl.

“When I stand back and watch the show and see all the people laughing, I’m proud that there is nothing else like this and that it happens right here,” said bartender Robin Butrick. “Our kids do amazing acting while representing Ogallala and Western Nebraska.”

The musical skits roll from the Oregon Trail days to the Pony Express, to Nebraska Territory and statehood, to the birth and death of the Texas Trail. The final number tells of the incorporation of Ogallala in 1884, followed by the cast’s rendition of “Welcome to the Good Life, Nebraska.”

In many ways, when a local gambler murdered a rival in the original Crystal Palace in 1884, it marked the end of the trail for Ogallala’s Wild West days. But in Ogallala, the summer show must go on. Cue the gunfighters!