A Cigar-Smoking Saloon In A Georgia Backyard

[JohnS]

A Cigar-Smoking Saloon In A Georgia Backyard

A couple's passion for the Wild West inspired them to build a cigar-smoking saloon on their six-acre property, and they were up to the challenge.

 Sep 8, 2025 - By Garrett Rutledge 

Photos/Briana Svagdis Photography 

The allure of the Wild West remains potent among Americans. It was a romantic, unforgiving and incredibly treacherous era in the country’s earlier days. In film, we happily yearn for the rugged, bygone lifestyle this period embodied, but few would have actually wanted to live through such a rustic time. But imagine if you could get a taste? Imagine a place with all the appeal and feel of the Old West, but without the underlying peril. Now, imagine that place is in your backyard. That’s exactly what Tobin King and his wife wanted to create at their home in Moreland, Georgia—and the end result is a rustic saloon entirely dedicated to Western culture and premium cigars. 

Georgia couple Tobin and Renee King took years to meticulously build and furnish their cigar-friendly saloon, complete with a proper Old West feel.

You won’t find Doc Holliday scheming inside this bar, desperately waiting to be someone’s Huckleberry, but this spot does feel like it belongs in Tombstone, Arizona. And that’s exactly what King and his wife, Renee, wanted. The idea came about five to six years ago while on a trip to, you guessed it, Tombstone, Arizona. King knew he wanted his own dedicated cigar space in his backyard, but he wasn’t quite sure what the space would entail. Then his wife had an idea. “When we went to Tombstone, she looked at me and was like ‘why don’t we build a saloon?’” says King, who, as a passionate fan of the movie Tombstone, happily obliged.  

The married couple standing out front of their saloon, flanked by a cigar store Indian and a stylish Wyatt Earp.

After initially considering pre-made sheds, a buddy of King’s, who works in construction, advised him to go in a different direction, recommending they build from scratch. And that’s what they did. Soon after, framers got to work on the exterior, before eventually passing the rest on to King and his wife. The couple, who both work full-time, worked weekends for about three years to finish the job. “It took a while, but it was fun,” says King. 

The saloon is 16 feet long by 28 feet wide, reaching heights of 20 feet at the highest point and 17 feet in the back. There’s a covered, six-foot porch out front, a staircase that leads to a second-floor loft on one side, a walled-in, gravel yard around the property, a small firepit and, in true Old West fashion, an outhouse a few paces away. King also has statues of Wyatt Earp and a traditional cigar store Indian standing guard at the saloon’s front doors. The saloon sits near a workshop out back, but is otherwise surrounded by woodlands on King’s six acres of land. 

On the other side of the saloon, there's even an outhouse with further decor, a sink and a chandelier.

The couple calls it Grey Beard’s Saloon. The name and logo are the brainchild of King’s wife, who more or less sized him up before suggesting the name and designing the logo. When they started building, he says his beard flowed all the way down to his belt. But King, a supervisor at a plating shop that works on aircraft parts, encountered George Steinbrenner-like management at work, who made him trim it to about two inches in length. The name and logo stayed, however, and can be seen brandished on poker chips, beer glasses and signs throughout the saloon. 

If you're going to build a personal, cigar-centric saloon in your backyard, having your own logo feels justified.

Aside from the TV and the surround sound system, much of the furnishings inside stay true to the American West theme. This is most evident on the walls, which, like an old trapper’s den, are lined with taxidermy mounts, even though King says he isn’t a hunter. “There’s a lot of mounts in here, but I actually bought them all,” says King, who felt they were necessary aesthetic items. Virtually everything in the room had to be sourced, from antique fairs to second-hand sales, or built to fill the space. There’s two antique chairs and a vintage couch they acquired from an old dentist office. A poker table that they built themselves and finished with a felt top. A 1904 piano with the old pump pedals, a brass cash register from 1910, copper-stamped ceilings and many more antique finds. “We actually rented a camper and went to Texas to the Round Top Antique Festival," says King, referring to one of the biggest annual antique fairs in the country. The couple came home with so many goods that they had to put a 40-foot container out back to store the items while they finished construction. 

The two beds on the second floor loft offer a place for guests to rest if they have one too many drinks—or cigars.

The saloon is a true byproduct of teamwork, and both husband and wife got their hands dirty during this project. “She built the TV box where the TV sits up in there, she built all the shutters,” says King. Plus, she also built the interior portion of the walk-in humidor inside the saloon. “Neither one of us have ever done anything, but she’s got a good brain on her,” he says with a chuckle. The humidor was made possible by the second-floor loft, equipped with two beds for guests, which left room underneath to add a walk-in humidor and a bar. King says the humidor space was framed in and dried out, when one day his wife grabbed the nail gun and put up the whole interior frame of the humidor. Surprised, since neither have any woodworking experience, he asked her where she learned how to do that. Her answer? “YouTube.”

Another benefit of adding a second-floor loft is that it created a cozy space for the bar and humidor to be nestled in.

The humidor is 10 feet by four feet with eight-foot-high ceilings. The exterior is surrounded by a stout stone wall and a further imposing dark brown, medieval-looking door with a cage opening in the middle. When you have a stockpile of 2,000 cigars inside, a formidable presence is certainly warranted. King mostly has boxes, saying he rarely buys single sticks unless he wants to try a brand out. “Davidoff has got to be the favorite,” says King, although he admits he has far more Olivas in stock than any other brand. King’s wife, though a mainstay in the saloon, doesn’t smoke cigars herself. “It’s funny because there are some cigars I’ll light up and she’ll be like ‘oh, I don’t like that one,’ just the smoke that comes off it. But the ones that she does like are of course the Davidoffs,” he says with a laugh. “Well, if that’s what you like, you’re taking us down an expensive avenue darling.”

King says he started smoking cigars after a visit to a shop in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, when an older, grey bearded shop owner convinced him to try some premium smokes instead of his usual cigarettes.

The bar, next to the humidor, has seven kegs on tap, six for beers and one for root beer. King says a dunkel-style beer and Smithwicks are always at-the-ready, otherwise he keeps a rotation. Despite the impressive variety on hand, beer isn’t always his cigar-pairing partner; he’ll vary between Cognac, Bourbon, Irish whiskey and Scotch, but he’s partial to the last. “If she [his wife] only wants me to smoke expensive cigars, I’m going to get nice Scotch too,” he says laughing, pointing to bottles of Macallan 18. 

The couple once held a 75-person wedding on their property, using the saloon as a place for the groomsmen to get ready and then as a bar during the reception.

The layout of the space, notably the high ceilings, is beneficial when it comes to ventilation. Though he considered a RabbitAir, King says he doesn’t have any form of air filtration, except cracking windows from time to time. “I’ve had 10 to 15 people in here all smoking cigars and we’ve never had any issue,” he says. “It’s not like you’re sitting in a cloud.” 

King purchased the Davidoff Year of the Snake cigars at a Davidoff shop in Germany last year, and he says those are his special occasion smokes.

The saloon has served many purposes, from hosting numerous work summits to even a pair of weddings. But in the end, it benefits its creators above all else. This couple’s saloon isn’t a watering hole meant for raucous gambling or drunken shootouts, but is simply a place for husband and wife to escape and exist together in a place reminiscent of what once was. “Her and I are out here pretty much every weekend,” says King. “It’s mostly just the two of us.”

Source: https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/a-cigar-smoking-saloon-in-a-georgia-backyard

[Chibearsv]

Gotta say, that's pretty cool.