5 Mar 2012 - posted by Dennis. JD’s Motorsickle Tours.com
The year is 1995 and I am standing on the boardwalk verandah of what I am told is The Oldest Biker Bar in the USA.
It is the Stoneville Saloon, in Alzada Montana where the fascia boasts, Cheap Drinks & Lousy Food !
Beside me are two bikers, strangers with a tale to recall and as I eavesdrop one tells us that in his childhood days he lived in this now deserted town that has fallen into the ground, save this establishment and some concrete ruins across the dusty road. I look around and there is nothing out there. It is high chapperal horse grazing rolling windswept praire country.
He gestures down the road to some trees and says, Our house stood over there and my folks are buried by those trees. Then with a sideways wave of his arm he adds, Those ruins were a gas station and my grandpappy is under those mounds there. WOW ! it is so surreal.
History tells me that this building was actually two structures, the oldest of which was then and is still now the bar. A bar where real gunslingers threw back whiskey and houked chewing tobacco towards the spittoons that are still there on the dirt and dusty floor.
It is the site of The Bloody Stoneville Gun Fight in February 1884.
The bar is a genuine American beauty with mahogany arches and aged mirrors, today it is attended by the owner, a Real Biker Chick. Now in her later years but standing proud in her black ballet tights and two two that contrasts with her white afro style frizzy hair and large heavy black rimmed glasses, she is just brilliant ! The Bars activities are listed as, Billards, Gambling, Food [try the Prairy Oysters ] and drinks.
This is Diane Turko and the story is told that she arrived with her biker man from California in 1992 and purchased this fine establishment, but sadly he passed away from cancer and Diane decided to stay on, thank goodness. Today she earns the bulk of her yearly income from the 10 days of annual The Sturgis Rally. Go girl, you are the salt of the earth and make the long ride to get to Sturgis and Alzada one of those memories that will roll on in a riders dreams.
Dennis, JD’s Motorsickle Tours.com
