Hysham's Brunswick bar famed for its burgers
Pub Date: 11/1/2008
By Paul F. Vang
You know you re in eastern Montana by yucca plants scattered across the prairie.
You can also tell you re in eastern Montana when the customer at the next table helpfully points out, They used to have a big North Dakota walleye hanging on the wall. Oh? Yup, a great big capital letter I . That is followed by, On the 4th of July, the North Dakotans come to the border and throw firecrackers at us. We light them and throw them back.
You can narrow things down a bit when you see the sign on the door proclaiming, World Famous Burgers. Then you know you re at the Brunswick Bar in Hysham, Montana.
It might seem a little presumptuous for a bar and cafe in the small (population 330) town of Hysham to claim international fame, but the owners, Duane and Denise Thrower, have been maintaining a guest book ever since they acquired the Brunswick Bar in 2003, and they have the autographs and home town locations to prove it.
Hysham may be a small town, but it s the county seat of Treasure County, in an area rich in history. It s just a short distance from the confluence of the Bighorn River with the Yellowstone River where, in 1807, fur trader and explorer Manuel Lisa established a trading post.
It took almost another century before the town of Hysham was established, when a big cattle ranch that operated in the area before homesteading days got the Northern Pacific railroad to establish a siding there. It s a big agricultural area with irrigated sugar beets, feed crops and ranching, as well as open pit coal mining. It lies between Billings and Forsyth just off I-90.
In 1908, entrepreneurs built the building housing the Yellowstone Hotel and Lone Star Bar. When Prohibition came along, the bar and hotel closed, though the building took new life as the Treasure County Courthouse.
On February 9, 1923, two local farmhands, Joseph Reagan and Glenna Bolton, both just in their 20s and convicted of murdering a deputy sheriff, kept a court-ordered appointment with the hangman on gallows erected behind the courthouse the only legally sanctioned executions ever carried out in Treasure County.
The old building burned down in 1953 and a new building was built on the site, and a new business, the Brunswick Bar, opened. The Brunswick name came from a previous bar that operated on the other side of the street, with the Brunswick name likely originating from the home community of an early Hysham resident. A café was added to the building about 10 years ago.
Duane and Denise Thrower originally lived on an area ranch, later going to work for Westmoreland Coal Company, and moving into the town of Hysham in 1989, where all four of their daughters completed high school. Duane managed the laboratory at the Sarpy Creek Mine, and Denise was a Resource Administrator for Westmoreland.
In 2003, Duane and Denise decided they were getting tired of working for a big corporation and all the running involved with commuting to their jobs. That s when they heard that the Brunswick Bar was for sale and made the deal to buy it.
We thought we d like to slow down a little bit, Duane recalled, dryly adding, That didn t work out.
The café s dining room was deserted the day this reporter stopped in, but the bar area was packed. We re usually swamped during the noon hour, Duane said, pointing out, We re the only café in town that s open at noon.
There was a steady flow of customer traffic coming in and out with another flow of traffic of heaping plates and takeout orders coming from the kitchen. Iced tea and lemonade were the lunch hour s best-selling drinks.
Many of those plates coming from the kitchen did, in fact, have some of those World Famous Burgers. Duane opened the guest book proving that even a small town café can acquire an international reputation.
The guest book lists customers hailing from all around the United States, including California, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington, New York, Arkansas, Wyoming, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Colorado, Alaska and ¦most everywhere in the country, plus foreign visitors from Canada, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Austria and Belgium, among others.
Many guest entries praised the food, especially the burgers.
What s their secret?
Our food is really homemade, says Duane. Our burgers are made from bulk ground beef, and not pre-frozen from a delivery truck. Our chicken tenders and finger steaks are all totally prepared in our kitchen. It seems like people like something a little different, he added.
It s a formula that seems to work and Duane tells of travelers delaying their lunch stop for hours to make it to Hysham because of recommendations from friends back home who had stopped there, or travelers making repeat stops, often checking their previous entry in the guest-book.
History is part of the Brunswick s décor. A display of historical artifacts, photos and old newspaper clippings lines the wall next to the bar. A couple trade tokens from the old Lone Star Bar, valid for a glass of beer, are among a select group of rare artifacts protected in a locked display case.
Another part of the bar s décor comes from old barn wood panels salvaged from the barn of an old military commissary at the mouth of the Bighorn River.
That wood came by steamboat up the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers in 1885, Denise said, adding that the old barn was, when razed, in decrepit condition, though still had some great wood, deserving renewed life at the Brunswick Bar.
The bar has a pool table and dart boards and the Brunswick hosts a number of pool and darts tournaments, plus they host live poker games in the evenings.
The Brunswick is also the home base for monthly motorcycle poker runs throughout the summer. And it s a stop on a big poker run based in Billings which takes place annually on the Sunday prior to September 11, with the goal of raising funds to send packages to area military personnel in Iraq.
On a back wall is the Signature Wall, with autographs and customer comments. The Signature Wall idea originated with their daughter, Shelley, who worked as a cook for several years before leaving for another job. Shelley came into the Brunswick this day for lunch and joined in the conversation, modestly taking credit for the Signature Wall, commenting, We tried to keep it clean.
Those two farmhands who were hanged behind the old county courthouse in 1923? Some claim their ghosts still linger.
One time I was working in the kitchen when all the pots and pans started rattling, recalls Shelley.
Another time, a door slammed shut for no apparent reason, added Denise. Shelley recalled another occasion when one of the poker players felt the presence of something unnatural. His face just went white, and then he moved to another chair so his back would be against the wall.
As for Duane and Denise s dream of slowing down a bit after purchasing the bar, Duane notes, We started out with 13 employees. Now it s just us and one employee.
He adds another of his trademark lines of dry humor, We might try to get a couple employees back. We re tired of working.
While running a small town bar hasn t exactly been a vacation, Duane is willing to share his insights, saying, I think everybody ought to have this experience and own a bar.
Shelley nods in agreement, adding, You get to see things you never expected to see.
Denise has the last word: I surely got educated.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, November, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.