National Western Stock Show patrons will be searching for a new honky-tonk come next January.

Due to a lost lease, the storied Denver Stockyard Saloon’s last dance coincided this past weekend with the culmination of Denver’s 2025 Stock Show season. 

The century-old frame of the old wooden Livestock Exchange building shook Friday night as people twirled and dipped their goodbyes across a crowded dance floor at the only private business, and family-run bar on the National Western Complex campus. 

“We’re gonna get sloppy tonight if that’s all right,” said the guitarist Scott Gray of the Union Gray band. Many in the crowd raised their glasses to the last rodeo.

Seventy years of traditional hoedown could not outlive progress.

Now that the “best 16 days of January” are over, the Stockyard Saloon will transition to where regulars order American favorites like char-broiled hamburgers in plastic baskets and Mexican food. 

That’s how it will be for the next three months until the place closes for good. 

“The lease expires in April. We spent a lot of money to buy that building from the city and it’s gonna be shut down for about a year for extensive renovations to return it to its grandeur,” said Kevin Preblud, president of Extended Downtown Development, or EXDO, who bought the three-building complex from the city of Denver in 2020 for $8.5 million. 

EXDO is in partnership with the National Western Center Authority, Elevation Development Group and the Colorado Cattleman’s Association 

Preblud said EXDO gave Saloon Owner Dean Maus, who has been renting the space for 25 years, ample warning when they met last April to give him the news. The company delayed most of its planned remodel until after Maus exits.

But EXDO has started work on the complex. Workers scrubbed down the original 127-year-old building, and removed, disassembled, and restored 400 windows to their original condition. 

The old wires, plumbing, and mechanicals were upgraded and replaced and the original lighting was restored.

“We knew we wanted to return the complex to its original stature on the campus,” said Preblud. 

The complex has been in disrepair. Graffiti and trash took over dark corners, once-proud rooms are boarded up and Denver’s Stockyard Saloon with its dirt parking lots is the only survivor.

But Maus, who left a wings restaurant in Morrison to run the tavern, claimed EXDO officials broke their promises when he felt they seemed willing to work with him, and then ghosted him. 

“We were not treated fairly. They’re taking our whole livelihood away from us,” said Maus. 

What exactly was the Livestock Exchange?

The saloon at 4710 Packing House Road (or 4710 National Western Drive depending on how old your maps are) is the furthest west and youngest of three buildings that make up Denver’s historic Livestock Exchange — a turn-of-the-century agricultural commerce center where cattle, sheep, and swine were bought and sold. 

The other two buildings are circa 1898 and 1916.

The saloon building was built as an attachment in 1918. 

Through the years, the once-bustling complex next door to the railroad housed pens of live animals as far as the eye could see.

“The pens stretched west to the Platte River and north to Riverside Cemetery,” said Denver historian and urban planner Shawn Snow.

Since then, newer National Western Center buildings and warehouses sit on much of that land. 

It was like a modern-day mall with a bank, a cigar store, a newspaper, KOA (King of Agriculture) radio station, regulatory agencies, and brand inspector station. Today the complex is a ramshackle group of buildings in limbo waiting for a renovation which developers said will be ready for the 2026 National Western. 

The saloon building is so old, it seems to lean. The back entrance stairs are just past two signs on iron poles which inform patrons that this may be their final trip to the Stockyard Saloon.

“THEY’RE TAKING US TO THE TRAIN STATION,” says one, and “MORE COLORADO HISTORY GOING AWAY” says another. 

Dime store cowboy 

Dean Maus, admits he’s been king of the rustic, rowdy bar scene despite the fact that he is not a bonafide cowboy. That statement is proven by the fact that he once lost money on a promotion when he bought dozens of pink and blue cowboy hats that never graced a true rancher’s head.

“I gave them away to kids,” he said. 

But he still loves the Saloon and the characters it draws.

 “After twenty-five years, they are forcing families out on the street,” he said.

One waitress wiped her eyes as she tried to explain her sorrow at the loss.

By a bottle-studded bar Friday night, Maus’ two sons stand on either side of him, his arms wrapped around their shoulders.

“This has been a place where million dollar deals were made the old-fashioned way with a handshake,” said Tyler Maus, who started wiping tables at 16 and worked himself up to head of security. 

At the saloon’s Last Dance Friday night a quarter of the clientele wore perfectly shaped black Stetsons, including Mike Miller — which is quite a story seeing as he died last August after a long illness. 

A group of men from Sunnybrook Cattle Co. brought Miller’s ashes in a clear jam jar topped with a tiny black felt cowboy hat scotch-taped to the lid. 

“We brought him down for the last show,” said Steve Daldegon, who said Miller’s final wish was in his parting letter.

The strange glass container was planted on the supper table between a bottle of Coors and a Cowboy Steak. 

When Daldegon told a young woman the nature of the dusty fragments she gasped: “Oh my God, that’s so sweet!!!”

Miller’s odd, but beautiful, appearance was a bright spot on a nostalgic night. 

Retired cops and active duty firefighters, water inspectors, and horse supplement saleswomen gathered at the Stockyard Saloon on a cold January night because it was their uncle’s watering hole, which was their uncle’s uncle’s watering hole. 

The current owners claim the original bar opened in 1945, World War II was winding down, Jackie Robinson became the first Black to play Major League Baseball, and “You Two-Timed Me Once Too Often,” by Tex Ritter was a radio staple.

Historian Snow said that post-war optimism lasted for 20 more years until meat packing businesses began to leave urban areas for more rural locations such as Greeley. 

“The Denver Stockyard Saloon is the last business standing from those olden days,” said Snow.

Last Friday night, the Union Grey band belted  “Living on Tulsa Time” as David Thomas walked down the rickety stairs. A Bob Dylan song came to mind.

“I don’t want the times to change,” he said. “I like them the way they are.”