Guliford All Nation Tavern

211 Fourth Avenue – Dodge City, Kansas

I started this Then and Now series because I kept seeing photos of people and places in my hometown which were completely unfamiliar. I shared this image in a batch of “Mystery Monday” photos of unidentified individuals on the Ford County Historical Society’s Facebook page back in October of 2023.

Warren Bowles let me know that was his grandfather, Claude Guliford, and sent some photos of the family’s restaurant and tavern north of Wright Park. Warren didn’t have an exact location and I’ve been trying to figure it out ever since.

Claude and Lillie (White) Guliford originally lived in Sterling and owned the Guliford Truck Line, which they established in April of 1920.

The family moved to Raton, New Mexico where their son, Charles, was born in 1925. At that time, Lillie was the community correspondent for The Chicago Defender newspaper.

By the Spring of 1928, the Gulifords had moved to Dodge City. This was during Prohibition and that May, Claude was accused of brewing beer for sale at home. He was arrested after police received a tip and found eight bottles of home brew in the refrigerator. According to the 1928 directory, he was working as a laborer at that time.

In the mid-1930s, the family lived in a house at 509 W Santa Fe Trail, which was on the lot directly east of the Coca-Cola bottling plant. The lot behind the house had frontage on Maple Street and unobstructed access to Fourth Avenue. At some point between 1932 and 1938, a small wood frame lunch counter and tavern was constructed there facing Fourth.

How do I know that’s the correct location? It’s because of the reflection in the window. The long building is the former Lee Bailey Garage, which was at 208 Fourth Avenue where Ace Hardware is today. To the right of that is the Sitler-Bell Block and to the far right is the flour mill. It was called the All Nation Tavern because the Gulifords would serve anyone in a time when that was far from the norm.

This photo was taken in front of the tavern looking east. In the back row (L to R) are Lillie, daughters Hazel and Margaret, and Claude, Sr. In front are sons Claude, Jr., Bobby, and Charles.

In December of 1936, Lillie became Treasurer of the local Phyllis Wheatley club. She had a regular byline in Kansas City’s The Call and was often selected to perform public relations duties for various local organizations. I’m pretty sure it was Lillie who arranged for the tavern’s entry into American Can Company’s national “Keglined Treasure Chest” contest for beer retailers in 1938.

As part of the promotion, a photographer from the company would drop by to snap a photo of the establishment’s display of Keglined cans. The Gulifords reportedly won a cash prize but unfortunately the text was cut off in the microfilm copy and I couldn’t confirm the amount.

The establishment was listed in directories and newspapers under a variety of names. It was often referred to as the Guliford Lunch or the Maple Street Tavern.

The house on Trail Street was removed to make way for the Coca-Cola plant expansion and I believe it was either moved to the Maple Street side of the lot or a new house was built there. The Gulifords also had a roller-skating rink on the property beginning in 1940.

By January of 1942, they had added a pool hall which was managed by son-in-law Warren Bowles, Sr.

That April, the Arkansas River flooded and the Gulifords got out their fishing poles.

That photo was printed in The Call and credited as a Locke photo, meaning it was probably taken by Frank Locke.

So what happened to the building? I really don’t know. Maybe flood waters damaged it beyond repair. Directory listings were unreliable but it appeared to still be on the same corner until around 1950.

However, this aerial photo taken during the flood in the Spring of 1951 shows those back lots had been cleared. You can see the old Coca-Cola wooden boxcar was still behind the bottling plant.

It’s entirely possible that the Gulifords moved to the building at the southeast corner of Fourth and Maple where many of you will remember having a cold beverage at the Park Street Tavern.

Claude died at the age of 62 on May 20, 1952 at which time Lillie lived with sons Bobby and Claude, Jr. She passed in March of 1964 at the age of 71.

The Coca-Cola plant built a huge new facility in 1965 which filled up the entire east end of the block where the All Nation Tavern and the old implement dealership had been located. This aerial photo from 1960 shows the property across the street from the old Lee Bailey Garage, which is marked with a red arrow.

After the bottling plant closed and was demolished, Maple Street was vacated between Fourth and Fifth and a new Holiday Inn Express opened on the newly combined blocks in August of 2017.

This is how the former site of the Guliford All Nation Tavern looks today:

I am so grateful to Warren for sharing those precious photos. The more I learn about my hometown, the more I realize I have left to learn.

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