Last Call for Dam Town Tavern

The Dam Town Tavern in Hungry Horse is seeing its final days, so last Friday I decided to give it a visit and talk to some of the patrons.

The watering hole was founded by Dan and Flo Mangan back during the Hungry Horse Dam Construction era of the early 1950s — thus the name.

It is the last bar in a town that once had several bars.

But owner Mick Ruis, who bought the bar several years ago, is moving its liquor license to a new sports bar he’s building on Nucleus Avenue in Columbia Falls. The Dam Town Tavern is set to close at the end of May, said Dave Ruis, Mick’s brother and manager of the place.

“I think it’s sad really,” said Jay Rumpza, a longtime patron, cigarette in hand.

Tears rolled down his eyes as he reminisced what this place meant to him.

He lamented the loss of the establishment.

“This bar means a lot to me, and to this town. It feels like they are ripping out the heart of Hungry Horse,” he said. “I just don’t know what to think.”

He recalled “Miss Laura” helping him out during a rough patch in his life years ago.

Miss Laura is Laura Djonne. Djonne was the sister of co-owner Larry Green and daughter of Gordon Green. The men bought the bar from Mangan in 1971.

But Djonne was the heart and soul of the place — she ran it for 43 years and founded the Canyon Christmas Kids Christmas Fund. Santa Claus would visit outside the bar every Christmas, often flying into town in a helicopter to visit the local kids and hand out gifts to everyone willing to wait in line on an often frigid December afternoon.

(The sun goes down in Hungry Horse about 1:30 p.m. as it dips behind Columbia Mountain).

On more than one occasion, Djonne was featured on the front page of the Hungry Horse News.

But Djonne, of Columbia Falls, stopped working there in 2014 and died in 2017.

But this reporter’s visit was marred by a fight.

The driver of a pickup truck backed into another car while I was talking to Rumpza outside the bar. The truck left. But then he returned just a few minutes later.

The owner of the damaged car was playing pool inside and Rumpza went in to get him. He was none too happy and when the truck driver came back and the two had a heated argument outside near the damaged car as the truck driver sat in his cab and at one point threatened to run over the owner of the dented car.

The owner of the damaged car pulled the truck driver out of his rig.

The two went in the bar and the argument got more intense as the owner of the truck was looking to get a few bucks for the car owner’s trouble out of the ATM machine.

But then there was the sound of a fist against a face and the truck driver went down in a swoon, apparently clocked by the car’s owner.

Blood trickled from the truck driver’s mouth as he wobbled back to his feet, not sure where he was.

A few minutes later I could hear the sound of the ambulance and a couple of Sheriff’s deputies arrived… another Friday night at the Dam Town Tavern.

It seemed like a good time to leave.