You can spot it the moment you drive into town at 8,750 feet: a tall wall of stained timber planks rising above Main Street, red letters spelling out "Bull O' the Woods," red wagon wheels lined like a fence along the sidewalk, four flags flying overhead, and a bull elk shed mounted front and center. Push through the swinging doors and you step into one of the great gathering rooms of the southern Rockies, a massive stone fireplace, a sprawling bar, pool tables and shuffleboard, and walls that have absorbed nearly a century of laughter. Since 1939, this Main Street landmark has been pouring cold beer and a good time for one generation of visitors after another.
It didn't start out as the Bull. When the doors first opened in 1939, the sign read "Silver Spruce Tavern," and Red River was in the middle of reinventing itself. The mines that had swelled the town to some 3,000 souls during the 1897 boom had played out by about 1905, and Red River was becoming a mountain retreat, where families from Texas and southern New Mexico came up for trout fishing and cool mountain air. The watering hole served drinks and a good time under a few different names over the decades, riding out the town's long transformation from quiet getaway to the ski town that Stokes Bolton's 1959 chairlift helped create.
The name we know today was born in a storm. In March 1989, a legendary snowstorm battered Red River and brought down the saloon's lighted marquee, the glowing sign that had long set the building apart on Main Street. "The old sign fell down," longtime manager Daryle Brown told New Mexico Magazine, and by then a local ordinance barred lighted signs, so the old marquee could never be replaced. Rather than fight the weather and the rulebook, the owners rebuilt the facade and gave the place a brand-new name. The Bull O' the Woods was born, with a look that embraced the town's old-west soul, right down to the timber planks and the elk shed above the door.
Today the Bull is one of Red River's most iconic Main Street stops. It is credited with the largest beer selection in town, the kitchen turns out steaks, burgers and New Mexican plates, and live music fills the room on holidays and weekends. There are pool tables inside and an outdoor firepit made for watching the world go by on Main Street, and in its own words the saloon has been the place for "legends, outlaws, and everything in between" since 1939.
Main Street wears its history well. A Red River Ski Area official once noted the town counted six buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, and the storefronts still carry the look of the mining-boom years. But few buildings tell the town's story quite like this one: a 1930s tavern that survived the snow, the sign ordinances, and eighty-five years of change, and came out the other side with a name as rugged as the peaks around it. Next time you stroll Main Street, stop in, settle in by the stone fireplace, and raise a glass to the blizzard that made the Bull.