Beer is Man’s Oldest Beverage. Have a Pint With History at These Places

People have been knocking back beers together for 6,000 years. The planet’s oldest known recipe comes from Mesopotamia in today’s Southern Iraq. It provides directions on how to turn old bread crusts into a thick, dark, warm beverage that, upon consumption, makes you feel exceptionally good.

There have always been taverns and saloons where friends, presidents, pirates, writers, gunfighters and maybe even a few ghosts have gathered to share a pint or two.

Here are a few that still survive along with the original atmosphere that makes them outstanding destinations to have a beer with history.

Drink with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in New York

When Samuel Fraunces opened his tavern in New York in 1762, there were already 217 taverns in the town to serve just 13,000 people. Today, Fraunces Tavern is the only one to survive and the oldest establishment serving food and drinks in New York.

Taverns at the time were a combination of an inn where you could stay and a public house where you could get a drink and meal. Both could be dreadful. People shared beds and sat at simple communal tables, often arranged around a fireplace, with a mishmash of different flatware and glasses. But Fraunces Tavern was different.

When the British captured New York in 1776, they took over the tavern, but on Nov. 25, 1783, the day the Revolutionary War officially ended, the British left New York and General Washington marched in. To celebrate the occasion, he took 185 friends to Fraunces Tavern for supper. The room where the dinner was held is now a gem of a museum that has been reconstructed as it might have looked back then.

Meet Tipsy, Tippler and Drunkard

George was no stranger to taverns or liquor. He liked wine, beer, and cider and was at one point the largest manufacturer of whiskey in the nation. Three of his dogs were called Tipsy, Tippler and Drunkard.

Today you can still dine and drink in Fraunces Tavern just like George. The main floor Tallmadge Room is filled with wood tables lit by candles. A maze of corridors lead to private dining areas and a bar with stuffed chairs, a roaring fireplace, and enough colonial prints to make George feel at home, especially since his favorite dish, slow-roasted chicken pot pie, is still on the menu.

Fraunces Tavern was for the hoi polloi, but you could also have a beer in a common man’s tavern in New York where Abraham Lincoln … and John Lennon, both stood at the bar. Lincoln came here after one of his most famous speeches in nearby Union Square.

Opened in 1854, McSorley’s Old Ale House is the longest continually operated saloon in New York (they stayed open during Prohibition as an illegal speakeasy, where others of the era closed). The place looks old. The floor is still covered with sawdust, there’s a genuine coal-burning stove, and the walls are a museum with everything from the handcuffs used to tie up Houdini to an authentic wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth.

Inside Snug and Evil

Being a respectable Irish bar, no women were admitted until 1970. An early 1920s slogan was: “Good Ale, Raw Onions and No Ladies.”   It took a lawsuit and a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court to change that. The bar’s revenge?  They allowed women but didn’t offer a ladies’ room.  A real women’s room was not added until 1986, although when I frequently visited the saloon in the 1970s, the woman would commandeer and control the bathroom, so ironically, there was often no men’s room.

For its entire history, McSorley’s has served only one beverage – ale. Ordering is simple, you simply say “Light or dark.” In another quirk of the bar, you need to buy two beers at a time.

As you would expect, the place attracts a large crowd. It’s best on a cold afternoon before the evening rush, when the late afternoon sun streams through the windows and the heat from the coal stove warms the room.  Pet one of the house cats, eat some peanuts and read e.e. cummings’ poem about the place: “I was sitting in McSorley’s. outside it was New York and beautifully snowing. inside snug and evil.”

Share a Drink With Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson in Oakland

Many saloons were frequented by writers, but there’s only one where the writer grew up. Adventurer and novelist Jack London entered Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon at the ferry dock in Oakland, California when he was just ten years old. He hung out in the bar, did his homework here when he was 17, listened to the stories of the seamen who frequented the place, and when he decided to go to college and become an adventure writer, it was the bar’s owner, Johnny Heinold, who loaned him the money. Jack went on to become one of the most famous and successful novelists of his era, known for the classic The Call of the Wild, which features scenes that take place in a thinly disguised Heinhold’s. He never forgot the saloon or the wild stories of the seamen who frequented it, and throughout his life, he came here often.

Entering today, truly little has changed. Johnny Heinold opened the bar on June 1, 1884. The building was constructed out of the remains of an abandoned stern-wheel paddle steamer named the Umatilla, which had operated during the Fraser River Gold Rush in British Columbia. The most notable thing about the saloon today is that the floor and the bar are tilted at an alarming angle. You must place a beer on the bar very carefully. It’s so tilted, that the glass will slide down and crash.  The uneven floor happened in 1906 when part of the swampy ground on which it was built collapsed during the great San Franciso earthquake. Check out the Heinold’s clock. It’s been stopped since the moment of the 1906 quake, at 5:18.

The tables and chairs, many from old whaling ships, are the same that Jack London studied at, and the room is a history of sea adventures from California with walls and ceilings covered with business cards, hats of past patrons and money, often signed by sailors about to set sail. The seamen would sign the bill so they knew they would have money for a drink waiting for them upon their return. In 1888, writer Robert Louis Stevenson of Treasure Island fame spent five weeks in Oakland, outfitting his yacht Casco for his last voyage, and he also spent many a day in Heinold’s dreaming of sea adventures.

Have a Pint With a New Orleans Pirate Named Lafitte

Jean Lafitte was one of the last and most colorful pirates of the Gulf of Mexico, and while little is known of him, history says that he and his brother Pierre operated for years in the late 1700s in the swamps of Barataria Bay south of New Orleans. Lafitte, dark-haired, handsome and popular with the ladies, never thought of himself as a pirate, but rather as a patriot.  He knew young America was short on cash, so using fast, well-armed schooners, his fleet of corsairs would sail from the swamps and capture Spanish and British (never American) ships filled with rum, silks, timber, cotton, guns, gold, slaves — whatever they could get their hands on – and then sell the booty for pennies on the dollar from a blacksmith shop in New Orleans.  In this way, he got back at the Spanish and British, whom he hated, and helped supply America with the cheap goods necessary to expand the young country. At least, that’s what he said. He also made a tidy profit for himself.

When the British attempted to invade and capture New Orleans in January 1815, Lafitte became a hero for offering cannons, pirates, and powder to Andrew Jackson to help win the Battle of New Orleans. His reward? The newly victorious American authorities threw him out. So, the brothers Lafitte moved a small army of a thousand pirates to Galveston, Texas, where they eventually disappeared into history.

Is the popular Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar in New Orleans really where Jean Lafitte operated?  Well of course it is! Built in the 1770s, it is one of the oldest surviving structures in New Orleans and a National Historic Landmark for its Spanish colonial architecture. In a city known for bars, it is perhaps the most famous and has been so since the 1940s when it began a new life as a popular night spot for bohemian clientele. With its brick and stone fireplaces, floor-to-ceiling open doors, open windows, dark timber ceiling, candle lighting, and location at the corner of Bourbon Street and St. Philip Street in the French Quarter, it is every Hollywood movie’s concept of a pirate bar. But didn’t pirates drink rum?  Well, yes. But water in a wood cask at sea would go bad quickly. Beer never spoiled, so pirates were far more likely to have a daily intake of beer than of rum.

Have a Beer at a Gunfighter’s Last Stand in Deadwood, South Dakota

While it might not be completely authentic, Saloon #10 in Deadwood, South Dakota, is a great deal of fun. It’s an Old West saloon with sawdust on the floor, stuffed animal heads, guns and historic photos on the walls.  The servers are dressed as saloon hall girls.

It was in an original bar across the street, long burned down, called Nutall & Mann’s No. 10 Saloon that “Wild Bill” Hickock, the “Prince of Pistoleers,” the original and most colorful gunfighter of the Old West, was shot and killed at 3 p.m. on August 2, 1876.

Wild Bill was such a romantic figure, it is hard to believe he really existed. Through dime novels, movies, and merchandising for 155 years, his image is more memorable than presidents and kings. A member of a wagon train in 1865 said, “He was a striking figure as I noticed him, a large broad-brimmed hat on his head, long drooping mustache, long flowing hair that fell about his shoulders, a brace of ivory-handled revolvers strapped to his waist, and an extra pair of holsters that fitted about the horn of his saddle where he could reach them instantly.”

Libbie Custer (yes, the wife of that Custer) wrote, “Physically, he was a delight to look upon. Tall, lithe, and free in every motion, he rode and walked as if every muscle was perfection.”

It was that Wild Bill who served as a marshal in some of the wildest cattle towns of the West. He had only to walk into a saloon where trouble was brewing, and most of the time, the trouble disappeared. Or ended up dead on the street. But usually, one look at his two Navy Colt revolvers tucked into a red sash, the grips facing outward in a fashion he believed – and had proved – gave him a split-second advantage in a reverse quick draw, and whoever was causing trouble had second thoughts.

It is in Deadwood, South Dakota, where Wild Bill is still remembered the most. He’s buried here. The local tourist bureau says there are more than 70 photos, murals, paintings and signs with images of Wild Bill at saloons, restaurants, and gift shops around town.  They encourage you to take and post selfies with them tagged #WildBillMe.

It’s ironic that Wild Bill is so famous here because he was only in Deadwood for two weeks. He was old with poor eyesight, almost broke at the end of his career, and never did anything in Deadwood but play cards. And get murdered. He was shot in the back of the head in a poker game, his cards sprawled on the table next to his body:  two black aces and two black eights, forever being remembered as “the dead man’s hand.”

Today, Saloon #10 claims to have the chair he was sitting in and re-enacts his murder several times a day. It’s just one of a half dozen times during the afternoon that reenacting gunslingers are out on the historic and colorful “Old West” Main Street of Deadwood firing guns.  After three days in town, you become so used to hearing gunfire, that you don’t even look up when you hear angry words followed by explosions.  But no town better epitomizes the Old West, and no better bar to experience it than old Saloon #10.

Have a Brew with a Ghost at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado

In 1903, F.O. Stanley, the wealthy inventor and producer of one of the first automobiles, the Stanley Steamer, was stricken with tuberculosis. Seeking a cure, he did what many at the time did and sought out the fresh air of Estes Park, Colorado. In one season, his health improved dramatically, so in 1907 he constructed a grand hotel complete with every modern service – electric lights, telephones, en suite bathrooms. It was the first resort in the world where guests arrived by car (his cars!) rather than by train, coming up from Denver. It had everything …. except heat! The hotel had no heating, so it had to close for the winter — a factor that helped determine its future fame.

In 1915, some 400 square miles adjacent to the hotel became Rocky Mountain National Park, and Estes Park grew into one of America’s largest summer resorts.

Then, in the late fall of 1974, a fledgling writer named Stephen King wanted to cross Trail Ridge Road across Rocky Mountain National Park, but the road had just closed that day because of an early snowstorm.  King sought refuge in the Stanley Hotel, which also had just closed for the winter, but appreciating King’s situation, allowed him to stay as the hotel’s only guest. With no one else in the hotel, Stephen King sat up late at the bar talking with Grady, the one remaining bartender. Then King checked into room 217. Here, he had one of the worst nightmares of his life! In a trance and a dream state, he walked alone down the empty hotel corridors all night, but by morning, he also had the outline of The Shining, his first best-selling hardback book.

Both Grady the bartender and room 217 make important appearances in the book, but of course, in the book, Grady is a ghost. The Stanley Kubrick/Jack Nicholson film The Shining was shot in Oregon, but King disliked it so much, that he supported a 1997 television movie remake, filmed entirely on-site at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park.

Today, the Stanley is regarded as one of the most haunted hotels in the world and is studied by paranormal experts. Ghost Tours of the hotel are popular and the film The Shining plays 24-7 on cable in every room in the Stanley. You can even stay in Room 217. But don’t forget to have a beer at the hotel bar first.