El Rancho's 49'er Bar listed in magazine as Best in U.S.

Joe Athens fixes a drink Thursday evening while tending bar at the 49er's Lounge, located inside of the El Rancho Hotel. The bar was recently named one of America's best by Esquire Magazine. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer

GALLUP — It's not very often that Gallup lands on any national "best" list of anything.

So when it does happen, it's usually time for locals to sit up and take notice.

Well, it's that time again. Named in an article entitled "Esquire's Best Bars in America," the 49er Lounge in the historic El Rancho Hotel has landed in the slick pages of Esquire magazine.

Gallup's humble little 49er Lounge is only one of two New Mexico establishments that make the top 50 list the other being Los Ojos in Jemez Springs. The two share editorial space with a number of big city bars, including two from Las Vegas, Nev., five from Chicago, three from New Orleans, five from New York City, three from San Francisco, one from Hollywood and one from Beverly Hills.

Take that, Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

However, judging from the article's laudatory praise of the 50 clubs, the listing doesn't mean the 49er Lounge is necessarily in elite company. It just means it's in interesting company. It's a bar with character.

"You're having: Whiskey, rocks," says the 49er listing. "Back when westerns were box-office gold, the El Rancho Hotel was where the stars ate, drank, and slept when they weren't sitting on horses. The hotel's lounge is both rough-hewn and rough around the edges. It doesn't serve a lot of fancy cocktails, but it has great booze."

"That's okay with us," said bartender Joe Athens of the best bar listing although he does take issue with the cocktail comment.

Athens, who has been tending bar at El Rancho only since January, believes the 49er's coziness and vintage movie star ambiance are factors that probably appealed to the Esquire writer. They are the factors, he explained, that seem to appeal to the mostly tourist and hotel guest crowd that passes through the lounge each week.

"They remember who John Wayne was," said Athens of his typical customers. "They can sit where John Wayne sat."

"There's not very much room for unique places like this," he added of the historic Gallup landmark. The 49er's rustic western atmosphere along with the mounted swordfish on the wall, Mexican music in the jukebox, and the Greek-Native American bartender serving the drinks make it a unique watering hole in a business that is now dominated by national hotel chains that feature look-alike lounges.

"There's a lot this hotel doesn't have," admitted Athens, citing such things as up-to-date cooling and electrical systems. "It's all part of the uniqueness."

However, Athens believes those characteristics are sometimes a plus for the 49er. Because the nearly 70-year-old lounge is not wired for refrigeration, it serves the coldest beer in Gallup due to its beer on ice, he said.

And it does serve some fancy cocktails.

"I make margaritas like crazy," said Athens, who added that he also serves up a lot of old fashioned cocktails like martinis and manhattans.

Based on the Esquire's accompanying story, "Five Things No Bar Should Have," the El Rancho's bar apparently fulfills the magazine's criteria fairly well. The 49er doesn't have natural light, dogs, or "twenty-two-year-old female bartenders who 'just wanna party.'"And according to Athens, the bar generally doesn't have music that's too loud or patrons who read in the bar although one customer was reading a copy of The Independent while the topic of reading was being discussed.

Athens, who shares bartending duties with his wife Cindy, said the 49er Lounge runs on Indian time: it opens at 5 p.m. and closes "when we get tired" usually around midnight.

And just like the Esquire says, it's located at 1000 E. Highway 66.