"A Real Western Bar"
406-685-3386
~ Hours
~
Monday - Thursday Noon to Close
Friday,
Saturday & Sunday
11:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m.
Pony Bar is the beating heart of a ghost town
PONY -- Michelle Smith
rolled into town in the dead of winter, driving a Jeep with no windows.
She scanned the empty, red brick buildings for life signs among the
ghostly remnants of a once-booming mining camp. At the west end of Main
Street, she found a beating heart: The Pony Bar.
Bar owner Scott Lambert won't forget the sight of Smith that day, standing
in the old saloon's doorway wearing a stocking cap.
"I felt sorry for her," Lambert said.
"He took me in," said Smith, 26.
Lambert immediately hired Smith, originally from New York state, as a
bartender. A year-and-a-half later, she's still in tiny Pony, six miles
west of Harrison off of Highway 287.
"I like it here,"
she said. "The people around here are kind of like family. We fight
like family and we love each other."
If Pony's 100 residents are one big family, the Pony Bar is their living
room.
It's where ranchers gather after branding. It's where football fans watch
Monday night games. It's where veterans' groups meet and hunting buddies
tell stories.
And the bar has a reputation for welcoming outsiders from all walks of
life.
On Saturday nights, pickup trucks line an otherwise empty Main Street.
Inside the 130-year-old building, people from three counties crowd the
bar, their laughter and music breathing life into an otherwise dead town.
"It's a real Montana bar," said Lambert, hooking the heels of
his dirty cowboy boots on the rung of a bar stool. "That's what the
draw is."
The last best bar
The Pony Bar is all that is left of once-thriving local commerce.
"Its the only business that survived; it was always kind of a miners'
bar," said bartender Bruce Flesch, who is a living portrait of an
Old-West barkeep in his black vest over a white shirt, finished with an
arm garter and bolo tie.
Pony was born in 1875 as a gold miners' camp. Thousands of people lived
here and there were schools, banks, Chinese laundries and saloons,
according to visitmt.com.
The Pony Bar originally was McKittrick Hall, built in 1877 as a town
meeting hall and boarding house, and later, was a house of ill repute,
Flesch said.
After Pony went belly-up in the early 1900s, a salty woman named Bert
Welch bought the hall and opened Bert's Pony Bar. She had a reputation for
opening promptly at 8 a.m., and closed promptly 10 hours later.
"She didn't care if the bar was packed full, she closed at 6
p.m.," said Dave Halvorson, a longtime resident and bar regular.
After Welch died, the bar changed hands a few times until Lambert took
over two years ago, when he was living in Harrison and spending spare time
at the saloon.
"The guy who owned it asked me to buy it a few years ago," said
Lambert, 47. "I said 'no.' Then I thought, you only live once, so
what the hell."
He, his girlfriend and his twin teenage boys now live in part of the
building formerly used as a boarding house.
"My bed's about 10 yards from the bar," he said.
Rough and ready
The Pony Bar serves as the town hall, veterans' lodge, restaurant, senior
center and leading employer.
"This is the gathering place," Halvorson said, as he drained a
Rainier with his wife after work one recent afternoon. "If you want
to see somebody, you come to the Pony Bar."
Miners, loggers, ranchers and bikers are the most regular customers here.
"I cater to them," Lambert said.
He sells cheap drinks and opens tabs because he knows many customers only
get paid once a month. He serves free food on Monday nights and stays open
365 days a year so lonely people always have a place to spend holidays.
And the decor reflects Pony's tough-going mining and ranching roots.
Antique taxidermy, old mining-claim signs, black-and-white photographs,
saddles and horse tack line the brick walls. A painting of scantily clad
prostitutes posing in front of a horse-draw wagon always seems to have at
least one onlooker. A collection of raw-humored bumper stickers sits above
the bar, including one that says, "My Montana has an East
infection."
Halvorson has been coming here for years to drink beer and tell stories
about things that happen, "only in Pony."
He recalled a cold day one hunting season when a herd of cow elk trotted
down the street past the bar, which sits just a few miles from access to
the Tobacco Root Mountains.
"Everybody sitting here said, 'Anybody got a cow elk tag?',"
Halvorson said. "But everybody who did was up on top of the mountain
and the elk just walked right through town."
Open hearts
The Pony Bar, with its creaky hardwood floors and musky beer scent, is
unique because although it caters to people like Halvorson, it welcomes
everyone.
"We don't judge people," Lambert said. "You can't judge
people by how they look, but we'll sit around a while and see how they
act."
On Saturday nights, people from Pony, Harrison, Whitehall, Cardwell, Three
Forks and even Bozeman fill the bar to dance, to eat burgers and ribs,
laugh over drinks and listen to live music, should someone happen to show
up to play.
"Locals will pick up their guitars and start playing," Smith
said. "Everybody's open to everyone. The strangest people come in and
people end up talking to them."
Last year, a man known only as "Hillbilly Evan" hitchhiked here
from Arkansas with a guitar, thick glasses and long, curly hair. Lambert
let Hillbilly sleep in the beer room and designated him the night
watchman. A few months later, the community embraced him.
"Around Christmas time, everybody pitched in and bought him a
guitar," Smith said.
Hillbilly now rents a cabin and works odd jobs around the area. Every
Saturday night, he is with his friends at the bar.
The way the community rallied for Hillbilly is typical of Pony, Halvorson
said.
"If you need any help with anything you're doing, everybody in town
shows up to help," he said.
Bucking trends
Like all of Montana, Pony draws more tourists every year.
Some come to the nearby Potosi Hot Springs and others have just heard of
the town and want to poke around the old buildings. Many stop in the bar
to ask about the town's history, and Flesch can deliver information.
Lambert knows he could tap the tourism industry, but he's not interested.
"If something's working, don't change it," he said, holding a
cigarette between thick, meaty fingers.
Even his advertising is old-school. He regularly visits other bars in the
area and buys the house a round of drinks to spread the word about the
Pony Bar.
"That's how they used to do it in the old days," he said.
The only major improvement he's making is restoring the boarding rooms to
rent out in the future. He wants the Pony Bar to continue serving locals,
as it has for decades after riding out economic turbulence and evolving
society.
And he wants the bar to continue serving as Pony's first embrace for
newcomers like Smith, who said she may leave here someday, but she's
content for now.
"Time will tell," Smith said.
