Opened in 1893, the Buckhorn Exchange in Denver is the city’s oldest restaurant. For more than 130 years, the Buckhorn Exchange has served as a steakhouse, watering hole, museum and monument to the history and mythology of the American West.
From the sidewalk, the Buckhorn Exchange doesn’t look like a place capable of holding more than a century of Colorado history. The two-story brick building at 1000 Osage Street stands apart from Denver’s glass towers and fashionable dining districts. But once through the door, the modern city recedes.
Hardwood floors creak underfoot. Antique firearms, faded photographs and artifacts crowd the walls. Hundreds of animals stare down from nearly every available surface. Some are native to the Rocky Mountain West. Others arrived from places far beyond it. Together, they form one of the most unusual dining rooms in the country.
The Buckhorn Exchange is not simply decorated in the style of the Old West. It is one of the few surviving places where that history, and the legends built around it, never completely left.
Buckhorn Exchange at a Glance
- The Buckhorn Exchange opened in 1893 and is Denver’s oldest restaurant.
- More than 500 taxidermy pieces, historic artifacts and an 1857 German white-oak bar give the restaurant its museum-like Old West atmosphere.
- The menu includes USDA Prime beef, buffalo, elk, Colorado lamb, quail and the restaurant’s famous Rocky Mountain oysters.
- Colorado Liquor License No. 1 remains on display inside.
The Buckhorn Exchange’s Old West Origins
Henry H. Zietz opened the establishment in November 1893. Better known as “Shorty Scout,” Zietz had worked as a cowboy and scout and was associated with William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody. According to Buckhorn history, Sitting Bull gave Zietz his nickname because of his small stature.
Zietz eventually invested his savings in a saloon across from the Rio Grande Railroad yards. The location shaped the business. Railroad workers, cattlemen, miners, gamblers, silver barons and businessmen all passed through its doors.
On payday, workers reportedly crossed Osage Street to exchange their checks for gold. Zietz gave each man a token for a free lunch and beer, correctly assuming that one complimentary drink would often lead to another purchased one.
Theodore Roosevelt became one of the Buckhorn’s most famous early guests. When the president’s train arrived at the nearby rail yards in 1905, Roosevelt ate at the restaurant and enlisted Zietz as a hunting guide for an expedition into Colorado’s Western Slope. A flag from the presidential train remains among the artifacts displayed inside.
Presidents Eisenhower, Carter and Reagan would later dine there, along with astronauts, actors, musicians, athletes and other prominent guests whose photographs now share wall space with the wildlife.
Inside the Buckhorn Exchange’s Old West Collection
The Buckhorn’s collection is difficult to separate from the restaurant itself. There are more than 500 taxidermy pieces, including deer, elk, bison, mountain sheep, birds, a towering Kodiak bear and curiosities such as a two-headed calf and the mythical jackalope.
Historic photographs, Native American artifacts and antique firearms fill what little space remains. Upstairs, an ornate white-oak bar built in Essen, Germany, in 1857 anchors the Victorian lounge. The building’s original decorative metal ceiling and hardwood floors have also survived.
Some Buckhorn stories occupy the hazy ground between documented history and frontier lore. When Prohibition began in Colorado in 1916, Zietz converted the saloon’s front room into a grocery store. Legend maintains that favored customers could still obtain whiskey hidden inside hollowed loaves of pumpernickel bread.
Other stories tell of a concealed route upstairs and bottles tucked inside a hollow stair baluster when authorities came looking. Whether every detail happened exactly as remembered matters less than the fact that the stories are still being told.
When Prohibition ended, the Buckhorn secured Colorado Liquor License No. 1. It remains on display today.
What to Eat at the Buckhorn Exchange
History may bring people through the door, but the Buckhorn has remained open for more than 130 years because it is still a very good restaurant.
While not exclusively focused on wild game, the current menu is unapologetically carnivorous. USDA Prime beef shares space with buffalo, elk, Colorado lamb, quail, duck, game hen and salmon.
Taste of the Wild
Diners looking to sample several species can order the family-style Taste of the Wild, which combines elk medallions, buffalo prime rib, quail and, depending on the size of the party, lamb chops.
The adventurous can begin with smoked buffalo sausage, fried alligator tail, grilled duck breast or sirloin tips made with beef, buffalo and elk.
Rocky Mountain Oysters
Then there are the Rocky Mountain oysters.
Thinly sliced, breaded, fried and served with horseradish sauce, the famous bull-calf delicacy has become a Buckhorn rite of passage. Some guests order them because they grew up eating them. Others want the story that comes with saying they did.
Executive Chef Cesar Garcia has spent more than three decades in the Buckhorn kitchen, making him another link in the restaurant’s long chain of continuity. Ownership has changed since the Zietz family sold the restaurant to Buckhorn Associates in 1978, but the identity of the place has remained remarkably intact.
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More Than a Meal
That is ultimately the reason to visit. Denver has no shortage of excellent steakhouses, and Colorado history can be viewed in more conventional museums. The Buckhorn offers something harder to reproduce—the chance to sit inside a place where food, artifacts, memory and myth have accumulated together for generations.
Go hungry, but do not rush. Arrive early enough to walk through the rooms, study the photographs, ask about the artifacts and have a drink at the old German bar. Order something you would not normally order.
The Buckhorn Exchange has survived railroads, Prohibition, changing ownership, shifting tastes and the transformation of Denver itself. It is more than a restaurant preserved from the past.
It remains a place where the West still comes to dinner.
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