St. Elmo Bar
Arizona’s longest-running bar - a Brewery Gulch landmark on Big Jeep Tours
36 Brewery Avenue, Old Bisbee
Opened in 1902, St. Elmo Bar is widely called the longest continuously operating bar in Arizona. It sits in Brewery Gulch, the canyon street that was once packed with saloons, boarding houses, and brothels when copper money poured through town. On a Big Jeep Tour, you do not just hear that history - you roll past the building while Travis puts it on the timeline of miners, Prohibition, and the Gulch that is still standing.
A short history worth hearing in person
1902 — the Gulch is wide open
Bisbee is a copper camp climbing the canyon. Brewery Gulch is the after-hours street. St. Elmo opens and keeps the doors moving through boom years when dozens of other joints competed for the same miners.
Prohibition — soda shop on paper
When Arizona went dry, St. Elmo stayed open as a soda fountain. The building’s lore includes a mine-cart / floor opening behind the bar—the kind of detail that only makes sense after you have seen how Bisbee is tunneled and stacked into the mountain.
After the mines
The pit era remade the hills. The Gulch quieted. St. Elmo did not close. National Trust for Historic Preservation later listed it among notable historic American dive bars: original bones, regulars, and a room that still feels like 1902 more than a theme park.
Stories that stick on tour
One Big Jeep Tours favorite: aviator Patrick Murphy, the night before his chaotic 1929 Naco bombing run during the Mexican Revolution era, killing time and nerve at St. Elmo. It is the kind of “only in Bisbee” thread Travis ties from the Gulch to the border on longer routes.Ghost talk comes with the building—jukebox, upstairs rooms, figures at the rail. Treat it as atmosphere. The documented fact is simpler: this bar never really left.
Visit notes
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Address: 36 Brewery Ave, Bisbee, AZ 85603
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Phone: (520) 432-5578
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Hours: 10 a.m.–2 a.m. daily (confirm if you are planning around a specific band night)
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Tours do not include drink stops in the fare. Arrange your own visit.
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Parking on the Gulch is tight—another reason the Jeep pickup matters.