There were occasions for interracial drinking. I have seen a few photographs of customers outside of a saloon with an African American present who did not appear to be staff. These are rare, and primary source documents about this are nonexistent - or rare enough that I have not found them. There were African American saloons, and these were more open to interracial drinking.

We excavated the African American "Boston Saloon" site in Virginia City, Nevada, in 2000, yielding a great deal of information about this ethnic saloon. Primary source documentation yields two instances of white people at the institution. Before the business moved by 1866 to the site we excavated, it was established two blocks uphill in 1863. There is some indication that Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain drank there at least on occasion. In addition, a newspaper article in 1866 describes the only white person in the saloons, a man named "Frenchie" (perhaps a man from France?) who was playing poker with other customers when his pistol fell from his lap, discharged, and sent a ball through his thigh. The amusing nature of the incident aside, here we have a white person drinking in the African American establishment.

These examples are not from Arizona, but the same standards likely existed there. Documentation is rare, so we have to take information from whatever source we can.

This does not address other minorities. My instinct - after studying saloons for two decades while excavating four sites - is that it would be more shocking to have a Native American or a Chinese American drinking in a "white" saloon. Native Americans did not have businesses they could patronize for drinking. Chinese Americans had their own institutions in their neighborhoods, usually referred to as "Chinatowns." Following the pattern that we found at the Boston Saloon, there is ample documentation of curious people going to Chinatown businesses to explore and experience the exotic. For various reasons, there may have been more comfort in going into Chinatown than going to an African American saloon.

The group we have not addressed are speakers of Spanish (representation in the 1880s would have been from Mexico, the Old Alta California, and South America - particularly from Chile). Acceptance in a White saloon would have been more complex. Speakers of Spanish could be accepted on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes people from Spanish-speaking countries were co-workers and they were accepted, so they could have access to a white saloon. A stranger who was from one of these countries would likely not be accepted in a white saloon.