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Interesting story. Thanks for sharing the experience with us. Glad to hear it had a happy ending.
We think you were smart to have a paper copy of your driver's license handy. As your case clearly illustrates, it's always wise to carry duplicate and/or backup personal documents when you travel. At least one globetrotter on the LVA staff not only carries his passport when he travels domestically (and, of course, internationally), he also takes along a good xeroxed copy of both it and his driver's license. He always carries both on his person, the originals in a pocket, the duplicates in a comfortable silk hidden money pouch.
Another idea is to carry a credit card with your photo on it. Bank of America has a program called "Photo Security." To add a photo to a new or existing credit card, all you do is stop by a participating Bank of America banking center. There, your photo is taken for free and put onto a new credit card, which you get in the mail in a couple of weeks. The photo can help to protect you from fraud if your credit card is lost, stolen, or used without your permission. And you might be able to use it as an additional form of identification.
Costco puts your mug on its membership card. So does Sam's Club. So do some amusement parks where can buy season memberships. Perhaps you have a photo ID from the military, your employer, or your school. Perhaps you've got a recently published photo of yourself from some periodical. (An author of our acquaintance lost the invitation to the private book-launch party for his own book. To prove he was who he said he was, he showed the bouncer the book itself, with his author's photo on the bio page.)
Then there's the whole issue of fake IDs. Google "fake ID" and you'll get 603,000 listings. We won't get into the legal and moral ramifications of it, but for backup ID with your own name and your own photo, it would be hard to imagine that you couldn't check into a hotel or get a comp from a slot club booth, especially if you have other forms of non-photo ID.
The main thing, as always, is to safeguard your photo IDs as well as possible, paying close attention to their whereabouts at all times. Of course, accidents do happen, so if anyone has any other ideas, feel free to send them in. We'll run them as updates to this answer.