Buffalo Bulletin, Heritage 2019 – 35
location at 14 S. Main St. in 1919, into a building that had
been a barbershop, a pool hall and a drugstore. During its
drugstore era, the flood of 1912 swept the shop off its foun-
dation and into the middle of Main Street.
Traces of those past businesses still remain in today’s
Century Club basement.
“I found a bunch of old bottles that you would find in a
drug store down there, old drug bottles,” said Harvey Jarvis,
recalling the time former owner Bill Pickett let him explore
the cellar with a metal detector. “It’s all dirt down there,
I saw one bottle sticking out and I dug down and found a
bunch more.”
That isn’t all Jarvis discovered.
“I found an ice cream maker from the olden days, just
sitting down there,” he said. “Old lanterns, original hinges
from that door… I got ‘em hanging on my wall.”
Betts was behind the bar from the times when “it was a
beer or just whiskey and water” until an era when her cus-
tomers would slip out back to smoke marijuana. Still, she
always knew how to care for her clientele.
“The rock and roll music would pretty much always start
a fight,” she said. “I would go over to the jukebox and put
some fast country on and people would start to dance and
forget about it.”
“We used to have a piano there and the old guys used to
come in and play the piano. That was when the cowboys
were coming through. It always has been the old ranchers,
the cowboys. It was always just a family bar. It was the
place for everyone to go.”
“We take all types,” said current owner Ryan Money, who
says he maintains that welcoming vibe. “That’s just how the
atmosphere is. We take the bikers, the cowboys, the outlaws,
the bankers, we take ‘em all.”
In the Century Club’s early days, people used to ride
horses straight through the building. According to Money,
that’s happened recently too – but when the rider ventured
over to the Occidental, he was slapped with a DUI on horse-
back.
The walls of the Century Club today are covered with
Ryan Money chats with a customer at the Century Club. A longtime bartender, Money bought the Century Club in 2016.
dim photos and an array of ramshackle memorabilia from
years gone by. Jarvis features prominently in one, dressed in
a long coat with an Abe Lincoln-beard. Asked how one gets
their photo on the bar’s wall, Jarvis claimed the qualifying
criteria are quite simple:
“Be kind, be gentle and don’t gossip.”
Jarvis is part of a group of 10 or 12 regulars who make
up the early shift at the Century Club these days, coming
in at 10 a.m. for a cup of coffee and the occasional brew.
Another, Don Fox, is a former owner of what was the
Buffalo Bar, housed in the building across the street that
now hold’s Margo’s Pottery.
“I had what was called the biker bar,” said Fox. “This
one’s the dive bar, it was all cowboys.”
Money’s goal as owner is to keep the Century Club just
as it is.
“People want to come in and see an old Western bar,” he
said. “One of our mottos is ‘The Century Club, it’s where
good friends meet,’ and that’s still true.”
“If there was a stranger, I would always get them inter-
mingled in there,” said Betts. “I didn’t want anybody to feel
like a stranger.” 
Money bought the Century Club in 2016 from James
Eklund, who bought it from Pickett in 2007. Pickett was
the one who expanded the place in the 1990s, converting an
old garage into a nook that now holds the pool table. The
Pickett era was also when the Century Club was home to a
large auto-fryer that spat out wings for just 25 cents apiece
on Wednesdays, a deal Money says he appreciated as a
21-year-old.
Throughout the recent changes in ownership, the bar has
kept the spirit of camaraderie alive.
“I cook for all the holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving,
Easter,” said Money, a tradition that began at least two own-
ers ago. ”I feed people for Super Bowl, and when I cook
dinner it’s a big dinner.”
“Ryan never charges,” said Fox of the meals. “A lot of
people don’t have family, they don’t have anywhere to go.
The Century Club – this is their family.”
Bulletin file photo