The Facebook account for the closed Museum Club of Flagstaff, Arizona, announced it had landed a new owner and would reopen “soon” after going on an indefinite hiatus last month.
Here’s the announcement:
Contacted through Facebook Messenger, the page’s administrator said: “I haven’t received authorization to release names yet, just the announcement it will be under new ownership soon.”
Other questions about the imminent ownership change went unanswered. The administrator, however, stated in a comment thread on the Facebook post that the new owner is local.
The Museum Club’s last day was Jan. 3 before the shutdown. The club’s Facebook page administrator stated on Facebook in late December “the numbers and everything are fine and have been the last few years … the COVID stuff has been a challenge.”
Co-owner Dru Douthit later told a local newspaper he would put the establishment up for sale but would consider reopening it by summer if it didn’t find a buyer.
The Museum Club also closed in September 2017. Douthit and Ty Mount, both of Flagstaff, purchased the club and reopened it three months later.
Built by taxidermist Dean Eldredge in 1931, the Museum Club once boasted nearly 30,000 items from his collection of stuffed animals, rifles and Native American artifacts.
It became a bar after the repeal of Prohibition and served as a recording studio through the 1950s.
The Museum Club earned enduring fame when Don and Thorna Scott bought it in the early 1960s and booked music legends such as Willie Nelson, Wynn Stewart, Wanda Jackson, Waylon Jennings and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Though the Scotts met their ends tragically — her by a fall down the stairs, him by suicide — other owners continued to play up the Museum Club’s country-western roots through the 21st century.
More about the Museum Club and its history can be read in a recent article in The Lumberjack, Northern Arizona University’s student newspaper.
(Image of the Museum Club in 2007 by Al_HikesAZ via Flickr)