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 first 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 Jefferson 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 construction, 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 trailblazers (Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first 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 21 years behind the pine became 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 unceremoniously 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 restaurants 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 neighborhoods. There are 58 homes in Sphinx Park; the Bucksnort Saloon was remote, its business largely seasonal, and its building suffered from significant structural and sewage issues.
The dining room of the Bucksnort is chockfull of memories (and hanging dollar bills).
Skyler McKinley
Or you’d have to be a pediatric emergency medicine physician. That’s what Pete Kazura, MD 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 situations, you have someone who wants to feel heard and wants to feel like you’re present.”
Kazura set to work like a field 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 offices 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.”
Kazura is also quick to point out 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 because, 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 number of longtime locals who instantly recognized 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 firmly in Kazura’s corner. As the doctor scurries about the place busing tables, pouring draft beer, and directing traffic around the parking lot, Galina Bye smiles 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 Bucksnort’s golden years, is back behind the bar.
In the years since she sold, she had focused on her art career. She had a new grandchild. She put herself, and her loved ones, first 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 the Bucksnort, but the Bucksnort owned me. And I cared about my customers, and I worried about them, but there was nothing I could do.”
It is, perhaps, the proper instinct of a pediatric physician to ask a parent what he needs to know about a child patient – and that’s what Kazura did after he pocketed the keys to the Bucksnort. It was a polite, productive conversation, but it was still clearly early days for Kazura, and that was that. Then, a few months ago, a sentimental Bye engaged with some of the Bucksnort’s old content on Facebook, triggering a notification on Kazura’s screen.
“I called her the next day,” Kazura remembered. “And we sat, and we had breakfast, and I says, ‘Look, I have my medicine career, I’ve got a family. I love this place, but I can’t run it every day. How do I be a 'landlord' and keep the heritage of the Bucksnort?’”
Bye smirked, Kazura says. “She said, ‘It’s the Bucksnort. It’s the only thing that it could be.’ And I said, “You’re coming back, aren’t you?”
The next day, she e-mailed Kazura the menu. A few months later, she’s greeting customers and reassuring greenhorn servers and running food — and grinning, unburdened by the relentless, quotidian hassles of ownership and buoyed by being back, as she phrases it, “in the people business.”
It’s an opportunity to experience a place that meant so much to her for 21 years for the first time, again, now through Kazura’s eyes, since he never stumbled through the bar while it was open.
“He will be surprised when he really sees it in full swing, when it is impossibly packed in here and the place is about to break apart as live music is playing,” she says. “It’s almost mystical. It is a mystical experience at the Bucksnort.”
You’d be forgiven if you found the whole thing a little too just-so, in a woo-woo way. An outsider pediatric physician swoops in to try to revive a place. Along the way his bedside manner wins over folks who, despite every reason not to trust him, become the very reason he’s able to succeed at saving something that otherwise would be gone forever. His mentor is kindly, sage, and believes in magic. And get this: It all comes together under a full moon? Get real.
For JoAnn Kazura, on hand to root on her son, Pete, during the Bucksnort’s first service under his ownership, it’s hardly surprising. “One of the things he said when he wanted to be a doctor was that he wanted to try for something that he didn’t think he could reach,” she says. “In other words, he set himself a goal that was almost unreachable, and he reached it. The Bucksnort is another one of those goals of, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to reach it, but I’m going to make it happen.’”
It's certainly improbable that we’ve gotten to this point, where the Bucksnort is the Bucksnort again, for at least one night, instead of mothballed, bulldozed, or moldering. If Bye, Kazura, and the people of Sphinx Park are able to keep it open by way of cunning tenacity and a community rooting them on, it’s your classic heroic epic. If the stars continue to align above plastic cups of beer, full moons and decades-old taxidermy, there’s an air of magical realism here. If it fails, burns down or slides into the nearby creek, it’s a tragedy. Either way, it’s something you’ll talk about over drinks.
And that’s just the thing: A good bar makes you feel like you’re the main character. A great one helps you realize that you’re just passing through part of its story. The Bucksnort Saloon clearly has more to tell.
The Bucksnort Saloon is now open Thursdays through Sundays at 15921 South Elk Creek Road in Pine, with live music on Saturdays. Check for updates at facebook.com/BucksnortSaloonPineColorado.
