Melvin’s Public House in downtown Heber City is haunted, and one of its ghosts is a former regular.
“Jack was 94,” recalled owner Melissa Laird. “His friends would bring him in once a week. And he’d sit there with his coat on. He was always cold. And he would have a beer and just talk to everybody.”
Jack still visits bar manager Ginger Mair every once in a while. During one shift, she witnessed a Bud Light inexplicably slide across the bar top, as if Jack were reaching for a cold one with his ethereal hand. There wasn’t any condensation underneath the can to provide a simple, scientific explanation.
“Everybody’s seen something,” Mair said.
It’s no wonder Melvin’s Public House has so many ghosts. The building is over 125 years old and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
That’s why Melvin’s Public House qualified for the state’s Rural Revive & Reside program, which awards grants of up to $50,000 for renovations of historic buildings that bring in business and housing opportunities.
The grant program is funded by the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund. It is administered by Utah Main Street, a network of downtown revitalization organizations across the state, of which Heber City’s Community Alliance for Main Street (CAMS) is a member.
CAMS Executive Director Rachel Kahler guided Laird through the application process, and on Wednesday, Melvin’s Public House received a grant of $50,000. The sports bar will be contributing an extra $12,500 of its own funds for renovations.
The projects include restoration of the floor, windows and front doors through methods including hand sanding, refinishing and sealing, as well as an upgrade to the kitchen hood to improve the interior temperature of the building.
“It’s always too hot or too cold. No one’s ever happy,” Laird said.
Melvin’s Public House will reopen on Monday after a three-week closure to restore the floors.
The building has been Melvin’s Public House since 2018. It opened as Wasatch Saloon after former owner Parley Murdock bought the property from his brother in 1901.
Murdock and other saloon owners in town faced business challenges as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cracked down on alcohol consumption, which is prohibited per the church’s 1833 health code, the “Word of Wisdom.”
Heber City leadership took several measures to discourage alcohol consumption, such as raising the price of a liquor license and outright banning the sale of alcoholic beverages in 1909, according to the National Register of Historic Places.
Murdock adapted to the ordinance and the following Prohibition era by transforming the saloon into a pool hall. He reopened a bar in the space following Prohibition, which he continued to operate until 1950.
Willis “Tink” Clyde, a former Park City miner of 17 years, bought the building “to try something different,” according to the National Register of Historic Places.
Clyde and his family ran Clyde’s Billiards until around the turn of the century. Before Laird opened Melvin’s Public House, the building served as home base for three restaurants: first, bistro The Spicy Lady, then rodeo-themed The Angry Bull, which was run by Flanagan’s Irish Pub co-owner John Kenworthy, and finally Vito’s Italian Ristorante.
Laird saw the for lease sign on the front of the building a few weeks after her 50th birthday and figured running a family-friendly sports bar would be the perfect way to spend her last decade of work before retirement. As a Heber City resident since 2009, she had grown tired of driving her and her husband to Park City every Sunday to find a good place to watch football.
So, the historic building was reimagined eight years ago. Today, the walls of the once-saloon are adorned with flags representing countless football teams. Laird’s regulars brought most of them in. Her team is the Ohio State Buckeyes, and she dances on the bar top every time they win.
The bar top, which was installed when Kenworthy ran The Angry Bull, is one of the building’s features that’s held up best over the years, according to Jose Sotelo, a handyman who has worked on the building multiple times over the past decade.
Operating out of such an old building, Laird walks in every day anticipating that something won’t work.
When the sports bar opened in 2018, it was always the plumbing, which was later fixed by rerouting the sewer lines.
Electrical is always “interesting,” Laird said. The sports bar is currently installing a new dishwasher, which has required lots of exploration of the crawl space underneath the building to find the right electric box.
But that’s OK with Laird — she likes buildings with character.
Part of the appeal of being part of a lineage of businesses operating out of the once-Wasatch Saloon is that customers always come in with stories, whether about eating pickled eggs at Clyde’s Billiards or cleaning the spittoons.
Many of Clyde’s descendants are regulars. Laird said that one of his great-granddaughters wants to hold a seance at Melvin’s Public House “to see who’s hanging out.”
“She’ll probably find her great-grandpa,” Laird said. “Hopefully, she finds my husband. He passed away last year, so we’ve been making fun (of it) because things fall down and lights flicker around a lot now. We just blame Mike for all that.”