The Museum Club

Dean Eldredge built the huge log building in 1931 to house his taxidermy collection, a museum so eccentric locals called it the zoo. By the mid-1930s it had become a Route 66 roadhouse, and it has spent nearly a century since as one of the most famous honky-tonks on the old highway.

The building’s hardest chapter belongs to Don and Thorna Scott, who ran the club in its mid-century heyday. Thorna died after a fall down the club’s stairs, and Don, grieving, died by suicide in the building in 1975. That documented sadness, not the taxidermy, is where the club’s stories begin.

Staff and patrons have long described the Scotts as still present: a woman on the staircase, a figure by the fireplace, bottles and barstools that move on quiet nights. The tellings vary, as roadhouse tellings do, and the club has never much minded the company.