Most American mountain towns have a saloon that is such an integral part of the fabric of the community, that the owners are bestowed special status in town. It is a long-standing irony of final frontier main streets that they cannot survive without law and order, but equally they cannot survive without the watering holes in which that law and order deteriorate. These bars tend to have longevity, along with a whiff of notoriety. The longer the bar has opened its doors to the public, the more chance that it has hosted every type of vice imaginable.

El Rancho in Durango, with its secret underground tunnels that hosted gambling, prostitutes and illicit liquor trafficking, is one such bar and its owners, Chip and Chris Lile, are popular figures in town. It has a palpable vibe to it, which is elevated by the wall murals and the tree’s branches that fuse seamlessly into the Brunswick bar. In its 80-year life, the walls of El Rancho have seen most things and the underground caves have presumably seen an awful lot more.

From a photographic point of view, the ambient light during the day is very generous at the street side part of the bar and that allowed me to freeze the big black wolf as he strolled down the bar.

It was a fleeting moment in a lauded watering hole.