Drinking Wyoming: The Drinks At Lander Bar Come With A Taste Of Western History

LANDER — The tin ceiling in the Lander Bar is one of many eye-catchers in this authentic Western hangout that attracts huge crowds in the summer, but it wasn’t something that was supposed to ever be seen. 

Greg Miles, one of three partners who bought the Lander Bar to restore it in the 1990s, discovered the tin ceiling accidentally during the course of their restoration. For him, it was an aha moment.

“I was crawling around in the bathroom, and I poked my head up in the ceiling,” Miles told Cowboy State Daily. “And I saw there was an old tin ceiling up there. And I went, ‘Oh my God, there’s a tin ceiling up here.'

"This thing was 98% intact, and I’m like, ‘Who, why would someone cover this up!?’”

By this time, however, the trio’s renovation work on the Lander Bar was well underway. Miles’ partners, Jim Mitchell and Jerry Amadon, told him they were not interested in adding yet another project to the already long list of things to do.

“We want to leave the beadboard, because it’s too expensive and too much work,” Miles recalled them saying to him. “We do not want to expose that tin ceiling.”

And there's a lot of Wyoming Western history and culture in the building. It was a saloon when it first openend in 1907, and had also been a brothel and hotel before operating as a dive bar in the years leading up to Miles and his partners buying and rejuvenating it.

When The Cat’s Away

Not long after Miles had found the tin ceiling, his partners went out of town on vacation. And like mice left to play while the cats are away, thoughts of that tin ceiling just would not leave Miles alone.

“I just started saying to myself, ‘How can you not expose this beautiful tin ceiling?’” Miles said. “And I realized it’s going to cost a little bit more money to clean this up and paint it and do some wiring for some lighting on it. But come on.”

Finally, Miles had enough of those kinds of thoughts chasing around his brain. He hired a couple of guys to come over and help him get rid of the eyesore. Beadboard covering up a historic tin ceiling. It just would not do.

“In one day, we took the whole drop ceiling down, exposing that tin ceiling up above,” he said. “And the cool thing was, the bar had a whole different vibe to it because of this high tin ceiling. It was beautiful.”

It took a while for the tin ceiling to look beautiful to his partners once they returned from vacation. 

“At first, they were kind of really annoyed with it,” Miles admitted. “Because it was going to cost more money to renovate. And I was like, ‘You guys, this is going to be worth it in the long run, trust me. This is a great piece of history.’”

In the end, Miles’ prediction proved right. The ceilings did catch attention. They were beautiful. And as a result, other people started peeking beneath the layers of modernization on their own historic buildings to see what might be there.

“I like to think that we sort of started a trend in Lander of going back into these old buildings and removing drop ceilings,” Miles said. “And over the next several years, businesses started removing their drop ceilings. So, you see the old tin ceilings now.”

The trend even spilled over into some of the facades, Miles added.

“Maybe three layers down, three remodels or two remodels back, there’s the old original facade of the building,” he said. “The old stonework or brickwork, the ornamental metal work, or whatever might be there.”

Love At First Sight

Miles was a ski patrolman at the time he and his buddies decided to buy the Lander Bar. He had come to Lander one weekend just to enjoy a day of climbing, then decided to get a beer afterward at the Lander Bar with a friend.

Miles hadn’t been looking for a bar to buy, but when he saw it was for sale, the wheels started turning.

“I sat down and looked around, and I said to my friend Mike Fisher, who is a good buddy of mine, I said, ‘Mike, I’m gonna buy this bar.’ And he looked at me like I was crazy," Miles said.

Crazy or not, the bar had an appealing vibe to it, and Miles couldn’t put the idea down.

“My two workmates — we’re all ski patrolmen — were kind of following me, going through the rigmarole of buying this bar,” Miles said.

When the bank refused to make the loan unless Miles would put up his rentals in Jackson as collateral, he decided he’d better pass on the deal. That was when Mitchell and Amadon suggested they look at forming a partnership.

The three took a drive to Lander one day to meet the owner and decided on the way back home to Jackson that they were indeed going to buy the place. 

“I thought it was a really cool building,” Mitchell said. “It was pretty run down when we bought it. Well, not pretty, it was really run down.”

In the beginning, the trio didn’t have any specific plans for the space. 

“But we were all kind of handy in the construction world,” Mitchell said. “So, we would go over every weekend to rip out walls and try to spruce the place up a little.”

During those trips, they’d stay upstairs in the tiny rooms that used to be part of the Lander Hotel. They made so many trips, in fact, that they fixed the rooms up so they’d each have a place to stay.

History Hangs On The Walls

Go into the Lander Bar today, and the remnants of Lander’s history are everywhere to see. It hangs on the walls, it’s in the tin ceiling above everyone’s heads, and it’s on the rugged wooden floors beneath walking feet.

Some of the history that hangs on the walls was rescued from the basement of the bar, but some was uncovered as the trio ripped out walls, tearing away various remodeling attempts, to expose rugged but good bones underneath.

Like the original wooden bar top, which had been hiding for decades under a beaten-up Formica countertop. 

“Peeling that Formica back and seeing the old bar underneath that was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool,’” Miles said. “We’re not going to put that stuff back down. We’re going to clean up the wood and make it look original.”

Those kinds of things made the group’s work a little like a treasure hunt, Mitchell said.

“We kept hoping as we were ripping out walls and stuff that we were going to find something really cool,” he said. “One thing we did find was an old receipt booklet. I opened it up and in the first page of the book there were three receipts on it for $2 for a room.”

The date on the receipts was Nov. 2, 1953, which just so happened to be the very day Mitchell was born.

“So, I have that hanging in my office now,” he said. “We did find all kinds of cool pictures of old cars parked out front, and of Indians riding down Main Street when it was still a dirt road.”

Those old pictures and many other artifacts besides are displayed on the walls, which has a small museum’s worth of whimsical and eclectic items that hint at Lander legends and shenanigans — both those that were and those that will be.

Elk antlers and a fedora-topped Zebra, for example, preside over things like branding irons from local ranches and a 1930s vintage photo of the bar. 

There are cowboy boots and western paintings, as well as a pair of female cowgirl boots that Miles believes could be a remnant from a brothel that reportedly used to operate from the Lander Hotel once upon a time.

There are newer items as well that pay homage to new history being made. Climbing gear that salutes the National Outdoor Leadership School that started in Lander and formed a strong base for the restored bar’s new clientele.

How far back the historic items really go is anyone’s guess. Many were found in the basement, neglected and forgotten.

They could be a couple generations old, or they could be as old as the bar itself, which was built in 1907 by William Coalter, right across from the newly arrived rail head, where all the area ranchers would ultimately take their cattle to market. 

 Meet Me At The Lander Bar

The Lander Bar isn’t just about kitsch and history, though. It’s also about good times and community. It’s become a go-to for people who live in or visit Lander.

Jackson has “Meet me at the Wort,” and Sheridan has “Meet me at the Mint,” but in Lander, it’s “Meet me at the Lander Bar.” And it’s immediately clear to new travelers who wander into the Lander Bar from off the street that they have joined a local scene. 

The energy of the place is unmistakable as climbers rub elbows with anglers who rub elbows with cowboys and tourists. Everyone is talking all at once, too, whether it’s about the wonderful weekend they just had in Lander, or the wonderful weekend they are planning to have.

The entire Coalter block is a little mini-restaurant row with the Cowfish and the Gannett Grill and the Lander Bar. An outdoor courtyard between them serves as a hub for live music that draws hundreds of people for blow-out occasions like the Fourth of July. 

The food, meanwhile, has people describing Lander as foodie heaven. The flavors are always fresh, with ingredients that are sourced, to the extent possible, from the Rocky Mountain West region. 

Sourcing local ingredients for the food served at the Gannett Grill is a goal, but not always possible, Kyle Vassilopoulos told Cowboy State Daily. He owns the Lander Bar these days and is general manager for the next-door restaurant, Cowfish. 

The restaurant and the Gannett Grill, which is directly attached to the bar, both require very large volumes of ingredients, he explained.

In the early days, Vassilopoulos would tell people about the local ingredients the restaurant or grill were using, but given the fleeting nature of that, he’s learned not to say which ingredients are local at any one time.

That’s because people become disappointed when they find out that the situation has changed and that a particular ingredient is no longer being locally sourced.

“Basically, any time we have the ability to make a choice to (buy local) we do it, but I don’t feel comfortable, like, wearing that badge,” he said. “We buy anything from any (local) purveyor that we can, in good faith, whenever we can.”

Fresh, Local Brews

Beer, meanwhile, is something that’s fresh and local, and it’s the star of the show for the Lander Bar. 

The Lander Brewery, managed by David Morton, offers a dozen local craft brews at any given time, and the tourists drink it all up. 

The tiny brewery is located inside the Cowfish restaurant’s bar behind glass walls, so that the vats containing the brews the restaurant and the Lander Bar offers can be seen working.

Morton grew up in Worland, and was looking to move back to the West, after living for a time in North Carolina. He had three job offers, but Lander Brewing was the one he really wanted.

“It was one of the pioneering breweries in the state,” Morton said. “And I had stopped in a few times when I traveled through seeing my family in Worland, and had the beer, which I thought was really good.”

But the Lander community itself also helped to sell the job.

“I grew up coming here for various different things and always loved being in Lander and had quite a few friends here already,” he said. “So, I wasn’t going to have to come and start over completely fresh with friends. I already had people here, so that made the difference.”

Morton makes four beers year-round from recipes that pre-date him, including Atlantic City Gold, Rock Chuck Rye, On Belay, and the Half-Tanked Hefe. The rest are seasonal beers, many of which are brews that Morton has developed himself. 

“I just try to be creative, and do whatever strikes my fancy,” he said. “Or whatever’s new and trendy. Sometimes. I don’t follow trends very much, but occasionally I’ll see something that I’m hearing a lot about and that sounds interesting to me.”

Morton isn’t sure if the bar will look at expanding its small brewery’s reach, though it does have the capacity to make about twice as much beer as it currently does. 

“I think we’re pretty happy just to keep these places filled and do a little bit of extra distribution on the side,” he said.

Some of that extra distribution heads to Atlantic City Mercantile, a high-end steakhouse that’s popular with tourists, despite being well off the beaten path.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.