SUMPTER — When Kathi Vinson talks about the Elkhorn Saloon in Sumpter, one story slides to the next as smoothly as the stanzas in a poem.

Stories of elk hunters stamping snow from their boots as they forego their cold camps in the forest for a hot meal in a convivial atmosphere.

Stories of burgers and beer and pool tournaments and live music.

“It was the place to be — it really was,” said Vinson, who has lived in Sumpter, the historic gold-mining town 28 miles west of Baker City with a population of about 210, for almost half a century.

Those two past tense references — “was” — are significant.

The Elkhorn Saloon, one of Sumpter’s iconic businesses, was destroyed by a fire early Wednesday, Aug. 16.

“It’s just really, really sad,” Vinson said on Thursday morning, Aug. 17. “Devastating.”

Although Vinson’s personal history with the Elkhorn dates to her arrival in Sumpter with her husband, Ronald, in April 1974, a much more recent episode in the saloon is prominent in her memory.

On March 22, 2023, the day Ronald died at age 77, Kathi sought solace in a familiar place.

When she stepped into the Elkhorn that evening, owner Dick Epler and his daughter, Jackie, both greeted her with consolations.

“Jackie gave me a hug and she stopped everything, asking for a moment of silence,” Kathi Vinson said. “They are just great people.”

The Eplers are the latest in a series of owners at the Elkhorn.

Vinson became acquainted with the Elkhorn when she worked there briefly as an evening shift cook during the deer and elk hunting seasons in the fall of 1974.

Back then the hunting seasons were general, meaning anyone could buy a tag. And thousands of hunters did, from across the state.

Some nights, Vinson said, it seemed as though most of them ended up at the Elkhorn.

“It was just crazy,” she said, chuckling at the memory.

The Elkhorn was the only place in town that served full dinners, she said, and that — along with the saloon, of course — ensured that hunters would make up much of the clientele.

She recalls that in those days many hunters drove open-topped Jeeps, and rather than leave their rifles outside, wether or not it was snowing, they would bring the guns inside.

“There were rifles stacked in the corners, hanging from racks on the walls,” Vinson said.

Part of Sumpter’s legacy

“It is part of Sumpter’s history for sure,” said Kurt Clarke, chief of the Sumpter Fire Department.

In the aftermath of the fire, Clarke said he has talked with many Sumpter residents who shared their memories of eating at the Elkhorn when they were children, in some cases many decades ago.

Clarke said the Elkhorn’s owner, Dick Epler, told him the business was insured.

John Young, who has lived in Sumpter for 15 years and was a frequent patron of the Elkhorn, said the business was an integral part of the community.

“Unfortunately, a lot of history burned down with it,” Young said.

LeAnne Woolf of Sumpter, whose parents, Leland and Nancy Myers, moved to the town in 1963, said historical records show the saloon’s site, on the east side of Mill Street between Auburn and Austin streets, was occupied by the Belvedere Hotel and by a brick building constructed around 1900 and later demolished.

The Belvedere survived the fire that destroyed much of Sumpter’s business district north of Auburn Street on Aug. 13, 1917, but the hotel succumbed to another fire eight years later, Woolf said.

A map drawn by Brooks Hawley, a Sumpter historian, in 1965 notes that the Elkhorn occupies the site of the Belvedere.

Woolf said she’s not sure when the current building was constructed. The saloon was known as the Idle Hour in 1963, she said, the name changing later to the Elkhorn Saloon. That change apparently happened between 1963 and 1965, as Hawley’s map refers to the Elkhorn.

More memories

Dan Warnock Jr., a longtime cattle rancher in Sumpter Valley, remembers when the building that became the Elkhorn housed Johnson’s meat market and grocery store.

That was in 1945, the year Warnock, then a teenager, moved with his family to Sumpter Valley. He said his dad, Dan Warnock Sr., sold beef to Johnson’s market.

Six years later, in 1951, when Dan Warnock Jr. turned 21, he and some buddies celebrated the milestone with beers at the Elkhorn, which had been turned into a saloon and restaurant.

The business was owned by John and Dorothy Rose. Warnock recalls that John Rose asked the young men, who Warnock admits were making rather a lot of noise, what the occasion was.

Warnock replied that it was his 21st birthday.

Rose did not offer his congratulations.

“He was so mad,” Warnock said. “He told me, ‘I’ve been serving you beer for three years and I had no idea you weren’t 21.’”

Warnock said the Elkhorn was better known for its saloon in those days.

In recent years, though, he said the place has become more renowned for its food. He said he and his wife, Jo, occasionally went to the Elkhorn on Taco Tuesday.

The Warnocks celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on March 23, 2023. Jo’s father was the dredgemaster for the Sumpter dredge, the massive gold-mining machine that is the centerpiece of Sumpter Valley Dredge State Heritage Area on the south side of Sumpter.

Nancy Myers, who moved to Sumpter at Thanksgiving 1963 with her husband, Leland, said the Elkhorn has been a fixture in Sumpter for the six decades she has lived in the town.

(Leland Myers died on Dec. 12, 2021.)

“It’s been a mainstay,” she said. “It was a gathering place (in 1963) and it has continued to be the gathering place.”

Myers said that during the spring of 1968, when she and other residents were planning the Sumpter Valley Days celebration for the Fourth of July, the Elkhorn was the obvious meeting place.