I Got An 1800s Saloon Bar For My Ghost Town!

hello there my name is Brent and right now I am standing on what will become the American Hotel here at Cerro Gordo soon people from all over the world will be able to congregate and learn more about this historic mining town but this hotel is missing something is missing something very important it's missing something that I am willing to fly 1600 miles to go to try to retrieve and drive 1600 miles back and what is missing is a bar and not just any bar but one of the most classic bars of the American West an original Brunswick bar from the 1800s that is the journey so let's get to it [Music] push yourself foreign California you know back in the day there was 4 000 people living here the hillsides were just littered with hundreds of buildings there's a couple hotels a couple brothels tons of restaurants and a lot more and unfortunately over the years most of those buildings have been lost and most recently we lost the American Hotel to a fire in 2020. this is a place that all the characters from the American West were rumored to go through you know this hotel was Grand when it opened and over the years it kind of felt the wear and tear of living up in such a harsh environment and eventually in the 1990s got restored they went back in they stabilized the hotel they put up the kind of fabric wallpaper and they even built a bar you know this bar was made of all recycled wood from a neighboring mine you know John the guy who built the bar is just one of the best Craftsmen that I've ever seen in my life you know and unfortunately the bar poke room everything was lost in this fire in 2020 but we're finally to a very exciting point we are finally to the point where the first floor of the American hotel is rough frame meaning you can finally stand on top of what will be the first floor of the hotel and to me one of the most important things in this hotel one of the most grand pieces is going to be the bar you know the bar that was originally built in the 90s was so stunning so beautiful my plan was always to have that restored how it was you know to give that familiar feel for the people who had been in here since that bar was built that is until I got a call from my friend Ryan my friend Ryan owns a bookstore and a vinyl record shop in Austin Texas these buildings were built in the 1800s and inside one half of the building he has a bar that was also from the 1800s and there's bars and just any bar from the 1800s this bar is a Brunswick bar from the 1800s and I don't know if you guys know too much about Brunswick but a Brunswick bar back in the day was a huge deal John Brunswick came over here from Switzerland and Brunswick was a master Carriage maker back in Switzerland so he moved here to America and you realize that Billiards you know pool was just sweeping the nation so he very quickly got into building Billiards Stables you know pool tables and these pool tables would very often find their way into bars and they became just the thing to have they basically swept the nation you know Abraham Lincoln had Brunswick build him a billiards table for himself so naturally as Brunswick was going around the nation you know he would spend a lot of time in these bars and he would get talking to the bar owners and as he was there he started discussing how to create just a better environment period so a big part of that was the bar itself so obviously that would lead Brunswick by the 1880s to start building bars you know they'd have these beautiful columns on them all sorts of just like wood carvings in them the likes of which it just weren't in bars at that time you know some of these bars would go for twenty thousand dollars back in 1880 so in today's dollars that's like a half a million dollars for these bars that were built in all these saloons now unfortunately in the early 1900s Brunswick started hearing Rumblings of prohibition you know they could kind of see the hand running on the wall so to speak so they stopped making these bars in 1917 or so and so the idea once again of having a Brunswick bar here at the American Hotel just feels amazing you know it feels almost too good to be true but of course with all things in life there's a catch and this catch is a 1500 mile catch this bar that we're discussing is sitting in Bastrop Texas and so I not only need to get myself to Bastrop Texas I then need to get said bar back to Cerro Gordo so my plan as it stands is this I'm Gonna Leave hopefully today it's already getting a little late I'm gonna go to Las Vegas which is the closest airport I am then gonna fly from Las Vegas to Austin Texas go out to Bastrop Texas somehow get the bar out of said building all the way back to Cerro Gordo California and along the way I you know I have to stop at some of the most infamous Western places uh along the Route my friend Chris coming with me Chris is going to be filming the rest of this so I can kind of focus on just you know making this the best possible move that we can but with that let's do it foreign living out here the closest airports are pretty much LAX so Los Angeles and Las which is Las Vegas both of which are about 200 miles away so when you think of your airport commute um ours are pretty long but typically I like to go to Las Vegas I just think that the drive out there is more beautiful you get to pass through Death Valley and just see the sand dunes you know you get to see all this beauty that is Death Valley National Park I also find that Las Vegas is just a little bit easier to get through as far as an airport it's not as crazy as LAX and also Chris had never been to Las Vegas in his life so we had to do of course the trip down the strip to give him an idea of you know what Las Vegas is all about do not care [Music] ful foreign it's way bigger than I guess I imagine but we had just the best guy here at uh CubeSmart I still got to empty my storage unit here I still have some stuff when I left you back in the day and when you get out of your hey I even got a subscriber out of this that was pretty cool so uh let's get in let's give it a little test try I always want to be a truck driver thanks Dave Sparks for all the experience of the five ton that's going to come in handy [Music] out to Bastrop which is about 30 minutes from here we're headed to Ryan's store and then tonight in the evening we kind of have a handyman coming over to devise the plan of how we're gonna get this thing removed tomorrow and get it into the truck so with that let's go to the Astro so with the truck secured we started our 30 mile Trek from Austin out to Bastrop Texas and bashup is just this beautiful small Texan town with an amazing Historic downtown and we were headed to astral records which is located right next to the painted porch bookstore both of which are owned by Ryan holiday and Ryan is a long time friend business partner and just the generous Soul who offered the bar to the town you know if you get a chance I would definitely go out and check out his bookstore it's super cool what he's done with his space you know and on the way out I thought I was pretty good at driving big trucks you know I drive the five ton round circle quite a bit but I remember we tried to go to Chipotle and trying to park this thing was just an absolute nightmare but eventually you made it and all was well is there a reunion hello that's our reunion mad at you that you gave it up for adoption yeah well he has better home now foreign tic Brunswick so this bar as far as I know was originally built for a saloon up the street called the iron front Saloon so it's been here since it was made it's got to be at least 100 years old I think and then the owner who built disco these have been a million things this is actually a one point a Billiards parlor it's been a bar so the owner of this building moved it here like 40 years ago maybe more so this idea of like moving bars from establishment to establishment isn't necessarily a new thing you know they're moving bars around all the time in the American West especially if it was a beautiful bar it was a fancy bar you know if a bar went under in one town you'd pick it up you move it to the next one and so I found a little bit you know grateful that we were filming it you know this bars had a history for the last 150 years hopefully they'll have a history for much longer than another 150 years up here at Cerro Gordo and so we're actually able to document you know this thing moving from Texas to 1600 miles away to California so like we have to use out of here somewhere you see Brunswick company this was the bar to have back in the day Ryan has a helper named Braden and Braden might be young but Brayden has got his stuff together you know Braden is a guy that just is a handyman of all sorts and so going down there with no tools we're getting some help and Brayden came to rock all right so so day two in Texas began pretty early and we had a crew you know Brayden brought out three of his friends and our goal that day was get this thing unaffixed from the brick wall behind it and loaded into our Penske Truck you know I wanted to hit the road I was thinking that we were going to go down there hit the road get back you know we had a certain number of days with this rental truck so I was trying to waste no time and he's better wait or no no they're mostly just to keep it there as handles on the face of it just laid it out a little bit not much it's so hard because every once in a while everything's possible yeah and then it's glued or something yeah it doesn't feel like it but right or there's already a crack and it's just brittle right you know we really lucked out where these mirrors actually weren't affixed to the wall behind them they didn't have that black tar type stuff sometimes they stick the mirrors to the back wall so after a little bit of careful finagling we got the mirror down which left the next move how do you think this is gonna go perfectly like everything yeah yeah obviously it'll go perfect it's the Moment of Truth after this we're home free tired member uh almost chipping and ideas you know as you know Brayden throwing an idea all was kind of like debating and we ended up getting to this point where I would go up on one ladder put it on my shoulder bring the bar down a little bit we'd have a guy on the far end or two guys bringing down the other end of this long piece of wood and somebody in the middle to support it because we couldn't have it Bend in the middle of a break and I gotta say leading up to that that was probably my most nerve-wracking moment I was thinking this is going to be difficult this is going to be hard um but we did it you know to be honest it went a lot smoother than I thought it would we got it down we got into the truck we got it loaded and I thought I was rocking and rolling you know I thought we were gonna get out of the Astro before the sun set and uh it turns out of all things the back bar was the most difficult of all the things to remove you know I thought this was different cabinets that were just kind of stuck next to each other and we could pick up the individual cabinets throw them in the truck be on our way no once upon a time or somewhere along the way it seems that they had fixed all these cabinets together so imagine a 20 foot long cabinet with drawers in it that is very heavy that cannot be bent because the top of these cabinets is a solid piece of wood so you don't want that bending and breaking so how much debate debate required a trip over to the Tractor Supply I got a number of furniture dollies I got a number of ratchet straps and after some moving around we got the bar up on its top onto the furniture dollies ratcheted it down so we essentially had a 20 foot long centipede of a cabinet to get into the pencil tree don't let it Flex in the middle too much lift up on that side your body and just as the sun's kind of setting we loaded it in voted in the rest of the stuff and we were set all right so everything is inside of the truck finally it was a hell of a day it went you know a little longer than I expected but very smoothly everything's still one piece everything is so we put back together which is very exciting now he's got to get it back there and once it's there unload it and figure out how to get up the hill but uh step one two or three I'm not sure what's up right now complete and we're gonna get going tomorrow morning thank you starting route to Fort Sumner all right that's our first stop Fort Sumner and that is where Billy the Kid uh is buried and was dead and so we have eight hours and 37 minutes so let's get this bar a little closer to Cerro Gordo [Music] we very quickly learned that this Penske truck is governed and it is governed at 70 miles per hour on the best of routes and is governed and can get up to maybe 50 miles an hour as you're going uphill so our trip to Fort Sumner was a long one but along the way I had a lot of time to think of Billy the Kid if you're not familiar Billy the Kid is one of the most infamous Outlaws of the American list you know he is known to have shot 21 people by the time he was 21. you know he has all sorts of great escapes from prisons he has all sorts of robberies hold up stealing he is just known for everything you can imagine the American West Bandit to be encapsulated within eventually in April of 1881 he got caught he got tried he got convicted of the murder of somebody and in typical Western fashion he escaped and I think that escape in 1891 really blew up Billy the Kid to just become football you know just become a superstar in his own way [Music] so after months on the Run finally in July of 1881 Billy the Kid was shot by the sheriff uh just near Fort Sumner New Mexico and he's buried the very next day now uh this brings up a lot of conspiracy theories because after Billy the Kid died over the coming decades many people claimed to be Billy the Kid it might have been a guy at a bar having too many drinks maybe wanting a free drink saying yeah hey I was actually Billy the Kid you know they shot killed identified and buried him all within a matter of about 24 hours you know the people that identified them were ones that were very interested in having this guy dead then secondly in 1904 the headstones for where Billy the Kid was buried were washed away in a flood and when the people that buried him were brought back they all identified different places where they buried Billy the Kid so obviously they couldn't find the remains of Billy the Kid anymore these days days there is a headstone says Billy the Kid and the Airbnb that we were headed to was just .2 miles from our ability kids final resting place was you go to Tombstone every building is you know big nose Kate's bar or Doc Holliday this or Wyatt Earp that you know and then Fort Sumner there is not just I believe the kid grave there's the Billy kid museum there is another Billy the Kid Museum and there's a good way kid gift shop all of which we would visit the next day for this first day of driving we arrived in Fort Sumner just at Sunset I was able to greet some horses hang out and just kind of soak in the history of the Wild Wild West [Music] all right so here's the cemetery and I think it's interesting is there's so much myth and lore about everything from the West you know all the people that claim to be him after he died I just feel like that level of mystery that level of war is almost lost today you know everything is a Google search away so these types of like Mysteries or like you know lore of the West is almost lost on us we just wrap ourselves in fact and insulate ourselves from any type of like magic or mystery and I think that's part of the reason why I love Sarah Gordo of the West I love stories like you know Billy the Kid it's just because I don't know it just leaves you so much to wonder Inspire disgust you know so Billy whether you're here whether you're not here you know you've inspired a lot of lore you've inspired a lot of Art and movies and it's funny the top of his creative someone says truth and history when history especially from back then was very much fact and fiction mixing together but right now I might just sit here for a little bit think about past think about the future think about myth think about lore and all that all that ties into Cerro Gordo [Music] thank you [Music] go to New Mexico is a little bit off Route 66 and the original idea of going there was just to explore you know I saw a really cool Church online I thought hey let's go there there's some mining equipment there as well it seems like it's worth the 40 or so Miles off of our route getting there I quickly realized that the church wow very very cool you know I think churches are among the most beautiful buildings that exist in the world really that the main attraction of golden is a guy named Leroy Gonzalez the self-appointed mayor of the whole town his honor the mayor of golden Leroy Gonzalez yeah and the mayor golden Iran for mayor nobody ran against me so be it hey there's something long enough you can become anybody Leroy just had that sparkle in his eye that he was excited that you were there you know I felt like he would have given this tour whether you know we were there whether nobody was there whether the camera is on whether the camera is off he was just stoked to show us his little piece of the earth uh my history goes back 135 years because I've done the math and the way I did the math was on the graves I have people buried in some fatal amounts I have people buried at the church and I have them in the Ortiz Mounds on the bottom of the Ortiz Mountain where the grave is you don't plant them like this yeah hey I got the gold mine the Gold Mine goes all the way back into the San Pedro mountains in theory and Theory yeah to this day they still mind goes into some federal Mounds yeah uh the pick is not getting refund in New Mexico it's found in the San Pedro mountains it weighed 22 ounces it was shaped like a boot whoa it is in a museum in Denver okay okay I tattooed my tree yeah this is a Cantina the Cantina I mean it's the late 1800s I made the face of it in a dead a winter yeah I made it for you for the people okay and then I made the whole thing come in everything is safe no worries this is my museum yeah check it out bro I know it is liberal and the other thing is they don't have much life but you know what when your eyes have to adjust to something not the sun yeah like this it helps them bro this is my swing you can swing on it yeah this is a steel table yeah it will not break guys yeah go ahead and I know how already he's gonna do it no I'm like oh cool bro old school go ahead home push yourself when I push you okay go ahead yeah the golf course of course as you can see my golf club my golf balls in the hole in one I hardly ever miss a shot yeah for the simple reason is because uh Tiger Woods didn't make it this is my psychiatrist couch I'll hang out yeah you can sit down you can lay down you can stand on your head together we will probe into your problem and we will persevere wait a minute times up 200 bucks I'll see you tomorrow if you want to write something down you're more than welcome to this is an historical landmark yeah hell yeah yeah I'll sign in yeah thank you I appreciate the more you write the better I won't read it uh let me rephrase that I will read it right away because I already talked to you later on I'll go see let's see what that let's see what those cool dudes left oh no I'll just say Let's go see where those dudes left after our route then I'll say if they're cool or not no that's you in 10 years man hell yes if you're anywhere near Golden New Mexico I do recommend reaching out to Leroy he did leave his mailing address he says he loves getting mail so uh maybe shoot him a note card or something like that too but Leroy Gonzalez was really the highlight of going to New Mexico for me and after that it was time to get hit the road so one thing I've been having a lot of fun with over the last few months is this week's sponsor bespoke post bespoke post is a monthly membership program that sends you one box of awesome each month and each box contains top shelf goods from these under the radar Brands you know every month they send you cool things to help you discover whatever your passions might be you know for me I know that I've discovered a lot of my new outdoor gear from a bespoke box that's amazing you know each box contains about seventy dollars in value but you're only paying a fraction of that and 90 of the products in these boxes are manufactured right here in the United States what I think is really cool about the boxes is just you pay you what you want you know every month you can get a preview of what's coming in your box of awesome you basically have three choices you can one you can keep it two you can kind of swap out the items within it and for something else or three you can just skip that month you know they're gonna change the Box lineup every month and if you skip it you're not going to pay for it so if you're interested and you want to start getting boxes like this every single month all you have to do is fill out the questionnaire you know the questionnaire is going to ask you things like you know are you into drinking are you into style are you into home decor are you into the outdoors and they're going to customize the Box selection for you each month and for anybody watching this video they're gonna give 20 off your first box of awesome all you have to do is go to bespokeost.com ghost town20 or simply just go to the link in the bio below and enter Ghost Town 20 at checkout and they'll give you 20 off I hope you guys check it out it's been a ton of fun for me it supports the town and it's just amazing products all throughout it [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] you know the goal for that day was get to Sedona Arizona and Sedona was a place I've never been to in my life but as the sun went down you know we still weren't quite in Sedona and that is when some interesting things started the highway into Sedona if you ever been there is very twisty very turny and at night it is a very bit anxiety-inducing if you're in a 26 foot box truck so as you're twisting and turning you know what seemed like forever I could tell that you're dropping into a beautiful Valley you know I just got would get glimpses out of the headlights or glimpses from a house in the distance but you could tell you were going into something special by the time we got to the house that we had there was no way to see very much but I could just kind of see the outline of some cliffs in the Moonlight and so Chris and I passed out really excited to get up the next day and see what Sedona was all about so [Music] take a little hike foreign was going to be our final day of driving the goal was to go 500 miles from Sedona to Keeler California you know to get it finally back here but before we started doing that we just took the mortgage to explore you know Sedona is just beautiful with its red and orange Cliffs and it's kind of juniper forests that just seem to go forever [Music] oh [Music] thank you so as we departed I was finally able to see this road that as we were coming in was lost to me in the dark and seeing the road during the day didn't make it that much more comfortable than it was at night to be honest with you in a 26 book box truck it took us quite a while to get on out of there but finally we're out and we hit the open road [Music] thank you [Music] all right it's I don't know time but just drive back in Keeler the bar is now and Sarah will go to vicinity tonight we sleep early tomorrow try to figure out how to get this bar safely up the hill which is going to be a battle but here we are in Tequila California a long way from Bastrop Texas right 1600 miles or so far is about to go to it's hopefully forever home [Music] now I'm gonna get some rest Chris and I passed out very quickly but with one rather big step left of getting the bar up the eight mile dirt road all the way to Cerro Gordo all right so the stage is set we've come 1600 miles all the Bastion from Texas bar is still an attack mirrors are safely loaded in Keeler there's only one final task and that task is getting this truck up a eight mile dirt road that's not in the best shape we're so close here at Silver I guess then we have to unload it too or something but for right now we need to get this thing up there let's give it a shot so the final journey of this bars Trek from Texas back to Cerro Gordo was once again our road our road an eight mile dirt road where you go from about 3 000 feet in elevation to about 82 or 8 300 feet in elevation is the kind of uh most difficult part of everything related to this town I'm gonna be taking a real slow this might be a solid hour up the road maybe more probably a slowest trip up the hill I found the hill with a lot of different things a five ton block I don't like the bumps but far up I gotta say this thing did good you know the Penske 26 footer really uh did the trick I have to say it went pretty much about a hitch and so we arrived in town and once we got here then wait our final step was two things one where we're gonna put this bar and two how are we gonna get it out you know it made it this far safe how do we get it out safe deliver a debate we decided that the church was probably the best place to store this thing you move on somewhere out of the elements it wasn't quite ready to put it into the hotel yet you know we're not at that phase but we needed somewhere out of the elements but maybe still accessible still somewhat close to the hotel and we laid out some plywoods we could move our giant centipede of a kind of cabinet around and we got down you know luckily that day there's a lot of volunteers here around Cerro Gordo so we all kind of chipped in and I'm very happy to say right now the Brunswick bar from the 1800s that uh was just in Bastrop Texas it's now safely here at Cerro Gordo and I'm stoked bar is unloaded bars in here bars not in the hotel it's a different video but bar is safely inside the church and protected as you can see here I can just come in here at night and practice my bar slides This Bar inside the American Hotel all right so that is it the Brunswick bar is back in Cerro Gordo 1600 miles from where it began and I gotta say just running my hand over it just gets me so excited you know to have the story of this bar be part of the story of the hotel it's just so cool you know for so long we were working on engineering and architecture and permits and all these things but now the bar is here the next batch of wood has arrived we're framing the walls of the first floor of the hotel you know finally I can think about the things that are going to go inside of the hotel which I think is important you know it's important to have intention it's important to have story I want when you walk into the hotel for every piece in there to feel like it belongs in there you know that it was put there intentionally it has a story to it you know we all love stories we all love looking around and understanding why everything is there and I think that this bar is in such a centerpiece to that it just gets me so riled up you know and the fact that we were able to capture its story is amazing you know I can't only imagine how many people are gonna be able to sit around this tell stories and just have an amazing time for many years to come and so with that I just want to say thank you guys so much you know this has truly been an amazing three years you know and the fact that this hotel is even happening is thanks and so much to everybody watching this channel you know your support and every way that means has meant everything to me you know has made it come alive it's so exciting to see people that are so excited about preserving history you know they're about a bar from 150 years ago so I just want to say thank you all so so much for following on this journey who knows what the next few months I'm told but uh all I know is that the walls of the hotel are going up and it's very exciting and it's very much in part to all of you guys but until next time that's it thank you all so much hope you can come up here one time to Cerro Gordo See This Bar see the hotel and uh have a great week

Channel: Ghost Town Living

Views: 699,909

Keywords: cerro gordo, cerro gordo ghost town, cerro gordo ghost town living, ghost town, ghost town living, living in a ghost town, underwood brent, Moving, 1800s, Saloon, Bar, Brunswick Bar, Transportation, Road Trip, Relocation, Cerro Gordo Adventures, Restoration, Old West, Billy the Kid, Historic Preservation, Travel, Texas to California, Epic Journey, Antique Furniture, Collectibles, Americana, Wild West, Rustic Charm, Historical Relics, Exciting, Adventure, Cross Country, American Hotel

Id: vJ4khmEo-EA

Length: 35min 31sec (2131 seconds)

Published: Sat May 13 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/malYca]

Such a pretty bar, can't wait to see it inside the hotel!

[u/Diegobyte]

Bruh he hypes this road up to much but now anything can get up it lol

[u/JasonBourne008]

That was a very interesting video Brent!

Having the second person come a long with you and take drone shots of the yellow truck made all the difference!

How did you capture the footage? Did you have someone else in a car driving ahead, stopping, setting up the drone and capturing you drive by? That is the best method I could think of.

[u/ShroomMeInTheHead]

The lore!