Farewell to the Dollar

It was the era of the all-nude bathhouse and the tofu-tamari stir-fry, and the sound of the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” was never too far off. It was a time when love was no longer free – but still relatively inexpensive – the grass was always greenest west of the Mississippi, and ski bumming was considered a noble avocation. For us mountain kids, snowboards were still a figment in Jake Burton’s imagination, chairlifts still seated only two people and the word “drought” was foreign to our powder-soaked knees.

In retrospect, life was pretty sweet back in the late 1970s in a little town called Telluride. We had a trippy bluegrass festival in June, a rock’n’ roll festival in August, and Texans still struggled with the pronunciation of our burg, confounding travel agents and keeping the lift lines appropriately sparse.

But all was still less than perfect for my 7-year-old sensibilities. There was still a little piece of powder town Valhalla, a secret and sacred watering ground, that was off limits to children – the Last Dollar Saloon.

Like all good hippie kids growing up in Telluride’s heyday (there were only about 90 of us, and I’m happy to report that more than a dozen of those refugees are currently hiding out down in Durango), I scored a fair amount of second-hand bar time. In case you missed it, Telluride was quite a party town back before the cities of New York and Los Angeles divied it up, ushered in furs, trophy homes and H3s, and took over. My dad, being a good parent, regularly took his son along and showed him the finer details of the mountain town pub. Thanks to pop’s steady hand, I learned how to handle a pool cue at the Sheridan bar, mastered bumper pool at the Roma and even saw the inside of the now deceased Trinity Tavern, all prior to celebrating a double-digit birthday. Like most of my young Telluride compadres, I could shuck a shelled peanut with two fingers and knew the exact Coca-Cola/grenadine syrup combination for a perfect Roy Rogers.

But for some reason, dad never took me to the Last Dollar. “Not our kind of bar,” he’d tell me en route to dinner and apologies to the family matriarch. Apologies accepted, the old man would routinely sneak back out and take several of his last dollars down to that very watering hole.

Consequently, the Dollar mystified me even from that early age. Nestled in that hundred-year-old corner building, it was a bar’s bar – a place with no grenadine syrup behind the counter, an establishment where the windows appeared artificially dark, a saloon smoky enough that the scent of Marlboros could be detected well down the street. Yep, back then “The Buck” was the major leagues – the top shelf – and for Telluride, that meant a hole-in-the-wall that would make Charles Bukowski blush like a school girl. Having passed by dozens of times as a fight was breaking out, a barfly was stumbling out into the daylight or a bottle was being broken deep inside the false-fronted building, I happily opted for the school girl route – that is until I celebrated 21 years and scored entry. On that first day, I passed the vintage wooden sign, stepped through the swinging front door and into the haze of ages. I strolled across the creaky wooden floor boards, stepped up to the bar, placed a $5 bill on the tired wooden surface and ordered a Budweiser, a libation that had been nearly two decades in coming. The bottle was perfectly chilled, the sound of Waylon Jennings was purring in the background, and I was hooked.

And so on early trips back home, I always retreated into the Dollar for a taste or two. On recent ski trips or festival excursions, “The Buck” has always been the lighthouse steering me back to land. And in this era where the all-nude bathhouse has given way to the exclusive semi-private spa, The Last Dollar seemed one of the only remaining, authentic Telluride institutions – a bar that still adhered to the old “To-Hell-U-Ride” ways. The Dollar remained one of the only places we Durango refugees could still recognize in that mountain town gone bad.

Sadly, that lighthouse is also going out. Yep, the ways of the New West have won, and a pub where the likes of Norman Mailer, John Hartford and Oliver Stone have hoisted cold ones is changing hands. Times have changed in that land where hang gliders once outnumbered private planes, and soon the only green changing hands in “The Buck” will be legitimate U.S. currency. The Last Dollar Saloon – the object of my fascination and legions of Telluriders before me – is becoming a bank.

The only farewell that seems appropriate is a heartfelt “adios” over a pull of high-dollar tequila, and luckily, I know just where to pay homage. It’s a bar’s bar, a place where there’s no grenadine syrup behind the bar and the windows always seem artificially dark. It’s a watering hole that was literally reborn from the ashes not long ago, and as long as the neon light is still on in the front window of El Rancho, I’ll know something is right in this ragged little world.

– Will Sands