The butter yellow horse on top of the Ranch Club has stood the test of time, though the building it rears over has changed hands throughout the decades.
New Horse, Same Rodeo on Chinden Boulevard
It isn’t even the original horse! An earlier version included a saddle and rider with a light-up lasso, according to the Idaho Statesman — though a photo of that horse doesn’t seem to be online anymore.
The Ranch Club was owned by a single family from 1950 until 2002, and started off its first few years as a gambling spot until that became illegal in Idaho. When exactly the original horse was replaced with today’s remains unclear, but apparently its rider fell off in the mid-1960s, which of course prompted bar visitors to try to get in the saddle.
One of the Ranch Club’s claims to fame is that a scene in “Bronco Billy,” a Clint Eastwood film, was shot outside the bar in 1980.
Riding Through the 21st Century
It’s been a bit of a bumpy ride for the stallion and his building since the Arana family sold in 2002. It was sometimes rowdy, allowed smoking indoors until the mid-2010s, and changed ownership a few times.
It truly altered its lineage when, after 70 years as the Ranch Club, the building became Somewhere Bar in 2021, a queer bar that often touted itself as Boise’s only gay-owned bar (that’s not quite accurate — it was Garden City’s only LGBTQ+ bar, but Waterbear Bar in downtown Boise is also proudly queer-owned).
But even its ownership status got unclear, as BoiseDev reported when Somewhere Bar announced its closure late last year.
This spring, the Ranch Club name was restored to the building under new ownership and the bar has been pouring drinks for pool-playing guests for three months. We’ll see if the latest iteration of this long-lived Garden City bar is here to stay!
