8 / Blue Ox Bar & Scenes of Paul Bunyan
Past the Barlow Room, take a right at the end of the hallway past the vintage ski collection and wheel-barrow bench. A quick left down a few steps leads you to the tiny Blue Ox Bar. Inside the cozy bar are three glass mosaic murals of Paul Bunyan, a Midwestern logger whose folklore imagery reached all the way to the Pacific Northwest and Timberline Lodge. Virginia Darce, Charles Haller and assistant, Peter Ferrarin, completed the three scenes within two years. Left mural introduces Bunyan and Babe. “The winter of the blue snow he found Babe, the blue ox, in the water, in a river, almost drowned.”— Darce, 1979.
The gate door entrance and hand rails feature more native-detailed hand forged iron works. All furniture chairs are emphasizing the mountain arch, which you will find throughout the lodge. An afterthought, the Blue Ox Bar was originally intended to be a wood storage room. The extended stone-walled hallway to the right was the original exterior of the lodge where you can see the windows of the adjacent Barlow Room. This hallway leads to the elevator for the lower accessible ADA entrance, as well as to the accessible ADA entrance to the Barlow Room.
Ski and climbing clothing and equipment are displayed outside the Blue Ox and the back Barlow Room door, which is the Tenth Mountain Division artifact display.
Glass mosaic wall murals, Paul Bunyan Carrying Babe the Blue Ox in the Winter of the Blue Snow, Paul Bunyan with Folded Arms and Paul Bunyan with his Blue Ox by Virginia Darce, Charles Haller and Peter Ferrarin, 1939.
Iron handrails at steps by Russell Maugans and Daryl Nelson, 1986.
Iron gate, Russell Maugans, 1990.
Wooden chairs, tables and bench designed by Howard Gifford, US Forest Service architect, 1937
LOCATION: BLUE OX BAR GROUND FLOOR
WOOD- IRON- GLASS MOSAICS- STONE