K.C. Hill’s employees tell her all the time that there are ghosts in Pinedale’s World Famous Corral Bar late at night, but she doesn’t feel them.
The only ghosts for her are the memories.
“I have two nieces and a nephew and then I have two sons — my oldest will be 22 in May — and he learned to walk in that bar,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “And I tell people that all the time. The craziest thing was, last year he sat at that bar for the first time and had a drink.”
It was a full-circle moment for Hill, and bittersweet as well.
Hill and her family have decided it’s time to relinquish their stewardship of the Pinedale favorite, whose name has included “World Famous” since the 1970s, even when it couldn’t possibly yet be world famous. The bar has been listed for sale with Rocky Mountain Realty for $1.495 million.
“My parents put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into that place,” Hill told Cowboy State Daily. “And it’s bittersweet to see it go. I just hope that someone will enjoy it as much as I and my parents did, because they really did. They bonded as a couple in that bar.”
Hill’s parents were married for 50 years before her mom Pat Bozner died, and 25 of those were at the bar.
“People say that they don’t want to own a business with their spouse because they’d kill each other,” Hill said. “But I just watched my parents blossom as a couple.
“They became so close because they were troubleshooting together all the time. They weren’t against each other. They were partnering together on something, and they respected each other more as the years went on.”
Hill’s father Joe Bozner has been ill more recently, and that’s part of what’s prompted the decision to sell the bar.
“It’s just time,” Hill said. “It’s time for someone else.”
A Life-Changing Vacation Trip
Hill’s parents bought the bar in 2000 during a weekend vacation trip to Pinedale.
“My parents owned a business in Rock Springs, a concrete business, but my grandparents and my dad built a cabin in Pinedale,” Hill recalled. “They started it, like, in 1977, and so we’ve been frequent flyers to Pinedale, just traveling on the weekends ever since I was born.”
The Corral was a favorite stop during their Pinedale runs, because it not only had delicious pizzas and sandwiches to go with a wide selection of beverages, but everything was always affordable.
One day, Joe saw a for-sale sign in the window of his favorite bar and decided to talk to the owner about buying it. He had noticed how, over the years, it was becoming quite run down.
“So, my parents pulled the trigger, and they spent probably six months cleaning it up and getting it functioning,” Hill said. “The coolers didn’t work, and they dumped a lot of money into it.”
So much money it had the couple “sweating bullets” at first, Hill said, because they weren’t sure they could make it work.
“They opened in October, and it was packed the whole weekend,” Hill said. “Packed from front to back.”
But Hill’s mom got into an altercation with one of the patrons at closing time. It was almost a deal-breaker.
“She went home and cried and told my dad, ‘I can’t do this,’” Hill recalled. “He was like, ‘Oh well, you know that’s going to happen. We’re going to get through this.’”
And they did.
Not only that, but they added on to the place, buying the building next door so they’d have another whole dance floor, and closing the restaurant so they could focus on the faster, more economic pizza, sandwiches and freezer-to-fryer bar food their establishment is now well-known for.
The pizza recipes, though, are still the same ones the restaurant had when Hill’s parents bought the place. That and the recipes for other bar favorites will go with the bar.
Tree Stump Bar Stools Are Staying
The bar was built sometime in the 1940s, Hill said. She has a photograph of it that’s dated 1946, but isn’t sure when it was exactly built.
She does know the bar has weathered all kinds of economic storms, from the oil and gas bust in the early 2000s to the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020.
Hill and her family have added many new amenities over the years, from a Crown shot machine to new bar stools. They did keep many of the old artifacts in place, though, like their tree stumps, which used to serve as the only barstools.
Some of the artifacts, like the sign with a picture of a woman that says, “No matter how good she looks, some guy’s tired of her shit,” will be going with Hill.
But those locally famous tree stump barstools and many other artifacts will be staying.
“I refused to get rid of (the tree stumps),” Hill said. “We have scattered them throughout the bar at our gaming machines and stuff. People love that we have logs for bar stools, and I remember them from when I was a kid.”
The Case Of The Disappearing Drinks
The family’s memories of the Corral Bar predate its 2000 purchase, and the bar will always have a soft spot in Hill and her family’s hearts.
“My mom grew up in Big Piney, and my aunt would tell us that they used to sneak into the Corral when she was in high school, and there were windows on the alley side of the bar,” Hill said. “And they used to take those people’s drinks and drink them, because they would set them down to go dancing.”
That’s one of many things blamed on ghosts over the years, but Hill said she thinks her family’s bar is just an old building that makes old building sounds late at night — sounds that are much more audible when one is alone at the bar, late at night.
After Pat died, some of the heart for the business went out of the family.
My dad didn’t do the business side of the bar,” Hill said. “My mom had always done that. So he was really struggling with that.”
Hill quit her job to help him at the bar in 2021, even though owning a bar had never been a particular dream of hers.
“My dad is 77 years old,” Hill said. “And we don’t live up there permanently. I still have kids in school and stuff like that. So, it’s just one of those things where we think it’s time for a fresh face.”
The community, Hill added, has been great.
“My dad stopped coming up to Pinedale in December because he had fallen, and it wasn’t but a few weeks and pretty soon everybody started asking about him. ‘Where’s Joe?’,” Hill said. “And people have sent cards, and they come find me if I’m up there and ask about him. That’s just how good of a community they are.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
