Arkey Blues Silver Dollar Saloon

A small town in Texas Hill Country, Bandera is home to just 829 residents. But this ain't no typical small town—it punches way above its weight class, like an angry goose that's been drinking rail whiskey.

Its history stretches way back to bloody battles fought between Apache and Comanche tribes and Spanish Conquistadors just north of town in Bandera Pass. These days, it holds the title of "The Cowboy Capital of the World," due to its role as a staging area for the last great cattle drives of the late 1800s. And it has a storied country music heritage, largely because it's home to Arkey Blue's Silver Dollar, one of the finest honky tonks in the world.

When you see the gold, you've found El Dorado. But if you're walking down Main Street in Bandera and hear music coming from a basement, you've found the legendary Silver Dollar. The actual building has been here since 1921 and operated as The Fox Hole until the 1940s, when it became the Silver Dollar. Then in 1968, the Silver Dollar was purchased by local musician Arkey Juenke, who later changed his name to Arkey Blue.

The Silver Dollar has hosted a veritable hall of fame of country musicians over the years, including Willie Nelson, Robert Earl Keen, Johnny Bush, Ernest Tubb, Charlie Robison, and Jay Hooker, among others. Tommy Alverson's song "Buy Me a Bar" is about Arkey Blue’s and Robert Earl Keen wrote “Feelin’ Good Again” here. The bar also appeared in the 1975 Peter Fonda film ‘Race with the Devil’.

You can smell the history when you step down the stairs into the Silver Dollar—and that's not just from the sawdust that covers the dance floor. It looks like a cowboy museum, with eveything from guitars and wild boar heads to street signs and gun holsters adorning the walls. The bar itself is thorughly tattooed with knife carvings and the bartenders have no shortage of stories to tell. Like the one time a patron brought a longhorn steer right into the bar. Or the time Arkey nearly lit a barstool on fire playing a prank on an unsuspecting victim.

Simply put, there's no other place quite like the Silver Dollar. A Texas treasure. Go see it.