14 JULY 17-23, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | What the Buck? RAISE A GLASS: THE LEGENDARY COLORADO SALOON IS BACK. BY SKYLER MC KINLEY After a couple of rounds and a live tune or ten in a good bar, you have no idea how long you’ve been there. The moment you walk into a great bar? You’re left wondering how long it’s been there – suspended in space and time, ancient and ageless, familiar and foreign. It’s folkloric. There was a certain magic spiraling through Sphinx Park’s legendary Bucksnort Saloon on the evening of Thursday, July 10. Sure, the full “Buck Moon” cast an ethereal light on everything. But tricks of the moon these were not: The Bucksnort was, against all odds, open for its fi rst service in three years — and, like all great bars, the night buzzed with the promise of the new within the comfort of the old. Of course, the Bucksnort was, for decades, a great bar. Wedged in the runoff between Schuyler Gulch and Elk Creek in the Jef- ferson County foothills just outside of Pine, the Bucksnort started out as the single-room Sphinx Park Mercantile in 1919. As is often the case with ramshackle high-country con- struction, various structures got grafted onto the thing over time — morphing it into a local square-dance venue, then a live music hall, then a classic bar and restaurant, until, by the 1970s, it had come into its own as the Bucksnort Saloon. Many bars bill themselves as “world-famous,” but the Bucksnort’s probably earned the right. After all, it’s nearly impossible to end up there by accident, and bold-faced names darkened the door all the time – from local celebs (John Elway, Roy Romer, and the members of OneRepublic) to national artists (Forest Whitaker, Neil Young) to international trail- blazers (Liberian President El- len Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s fi rst elected female head of state). They scrawled their names on one-dollar-bills crammed next to thousands of others stuck to every surface in sight by the brewers, bikers, brawlers, bartenders, tourists, and even teetotalers who made the pilgrimage to what became the platonic mountain bar. Whether you’re from here, new here, or just visiting, to say you’ve seen the “real Colorado,” you must see the Bucksnort. Until you couldn’t. Galina Bye, the Bucksnort’s owner/ operator who during her two dozen years behind the pine be- came its backbone, made a well- deserved decision to pass the Buck onto new owners in 2018; every restaurateur deserves the right to retire. Unfortunately, as her successors became waylaid by the pandemic and a litany of septic, zoning, electrical, and other county-level violations, the saloon shuttered unceremo- niously in 2022 – and sat vacant and up for sale. For many iconic Colorado hospitality businesses, that’s usually the end of the story. Even the most beloved bars and res- taurants can be notoriously low- margin, high-risk operations, which is why so many either burn out or fade away, even in dense, buzzy, well-to-do neigh- borhoods. There are 58 homes in Sphinx Park; the Bucksnort Saloon was remote, its business largely sea- sonal, and its building suffered from signifi - cant structural and sewage issues. You’d have to be crazy to take it on. Or you’d have to be a pediatric emergency medicine physician. That’s what Pete Kazura is, anyway, and he bought the Bucksnort, intending to save it, in November 2023. “If you look at the restaurant business, it’s very similar to the emergency room,” he says. “You’ve got a series of rooms/tables, and a series of patients/customers. In both situa- tions, you have someone who wants to feel heard and wants to feel like you’re present.” Kazura set to work like a fi eld medic in triage. “How do you eat an elephant? You take one bite at a time,” he says. “I’d show up at the county offi ces and say, ‘Where are we in the process? What is the next action item that I need to tackle? As long as I have a directive, I can work on that directive. And I did.” The fi rst hurdle was fi xing the septic sys- tem, for obvious reasons: The Bucksnort is a 100-year-old, health-department-regulated restaurant nestled against a creek in a FEMA- regulated fl ood zone. One wrong move when it comes to sewage, and you have the makings of either a disaster movie, a horror movie...or both. Kazura and a team of volunteers partnered with the experts at Denver-based Stinson Dirtwork with clear communication from and steps forward set by the reg- ulators with Jefferson County. Incredibly, by March, Kazura and team “fi gured out some- thing crazy,” as he phrases it, and received the county’s blessing. On opening night, over burgers and beers, longtime customers remarked that they “can’t wait to check out the bathrooms,” though Bye points out that not all that much has changed — at least from an above-ground perspective, anyway. After the sewage system came issues with the liquor license and zoning, not to mention all the other gremlins you’d expect would rear their head in a spot of the Bucksnort’s vintage. Miraculously, they were managed — though Kazura is also quick to note that, as in emergency medicine, bringing the Bucksnort back to life was a team effort. “The most important thing is that it’s the people that came out of the woodwork to help, and volunteer time, and resources, and information that made this possible,” he says. For Kazura, a bar isn’t just taxidermy mounts, dollar bills, or historic photos – though the Bucksnort still has all three in spades, albeit fewer bucks on the walls than in its heyday. He bought the Bucksnort be- cause, he says, he “loved the energy of the place, loved the geography, and loved what it meant to so many people.” At the Bucksnort’s soft opening, the num- ber of longtime locals who instantly recog- nized and warmly embraced Kazura (or went out of their way to introduce themselves and regale him with their favorite stories of the ‘Snort over the years) suggests he’s come to mean something to them, too. Of course, it helps that the Bucksnort’s biggest booster is fi rmly in Kazura’s corner. As the doctor scurried about the place busing tables, pouring draft beer and directing traf- fi c around the parking lot, Galina Bye smiled knowingly between moments coaching the Bucksnort’s new employees on the quirks of running food and taking orders in a century- old building. That’s right: Bye, the owner perhaps most associated with the Bucks- nort’s golden years, is back behind the bar. In the years since she sold, she had fo- cused on her art career. She had a new grand- child. She put herself, and her loved ones, fi rst in a way that you can’t with a service industry albatross around your neck. And yet? “The Bucksnort was in my blood,” she says. “I spent 21 years here. Yes, I owned CAFE FIND MORE FOOD & DRINK COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/RESTAURANTS The interior of the reopened Bucksnort, the legendary Colorado mountain bar. Dr. Pete Kazura, the new owner of the Bucksnort, respects the bar’s legacy. SKYLER MCKINLEY SKYLER MCKINLEY
