This is Part 2 of a multi-part story. You can read Part 1 here.
by J. Eugenio Cotera E.
Why the Kentucky Bar in Juarez Doesn’t Need to Have Opened in 1920
Sometime between 1944 and 1954—as far as I can tell from mentions in the newspapers of the day—Francisco “Pancho” Montes decided to change the name of his bar from Sloppy Joe’s to Kentucky Bar, or “Club Kentucky,” as a painted sign reads on the facade in the title picture of this story’s first installment.
According to an article by Doralisa Pilarte in The Pampa News in 1986, Pancho bought the saloon—implying that there was already an existing bar on the premises—from an Armenian man in 1933. His immigration document from 1930 lists his occupation as bartender, which makes me wonder whether he was actually working as a bartender at that same saloon before eventually acquiring it.
He named his bar Sloppy Joe’s and, in his own words: “But after the war the name sounded too rough, so I changed it to The Kentucky Club.”
World War II ended in 1945, which narrows the likely period for the name change. In the article, Pancho offers two very different explanations for the origin of the name Kentucky Bar.
First, he says that he got the idea after a trip to Kentucky “to take part in a baseball owners’ meeting.” He was a part owner of the Indios de Juarez baseball team by at least 1944.
Then he acknowledges that, back in the day, there had been a hotel “upstairs” from his property “with the same name.” He explains that after a fire the hotel closed: “But the sign remained and so we took advantage of that and renamed it.”
I found only one reference in the El Paso Herald-Post, from 1943, to a Kentucky Hotel in downtown Juarez that could fit our story—and it is a particularly hilarious piece of newspaper writing.
I found another article that further complicates the story. This one appeared in the Midland Reporter-Telegram on Sunday, July 10, 1983, and was published by the Associated Press. The article mentions that Pancho named the bar after the Kentucky Derby horse race, that the bar opened in 1933 and was already named Sloppy Joe’s, and that Pancho Montes “bought the bar from an American whiskey distributor in the aftermath of Prohibition’s repeal.”
So which is the true story?
The historical connection between the state of Kentucky and the city of Juarez goes way back.
Imagine attending the famous “old” Juarez racetrack, Terrazas Park, which opened in 1909—the same year Don Pancho Montes was born. The racetrack was named after Alberto Terrazas, son of Luis Terrazas, the wealthiest man in Chihuahua and the biggest landowner in all of Mexico. Horses from Kentucky were traded on the premises.
The first Kentucky Derby had been run 34 years earlier, on May 17, 1875.
Later, in the 1920s, Waterfill & Frazier and D.M. Distilleries advertised “Kentucky”-style bourbon and whiskey on their brands.
As a young kid, I witnessed the distilling process at the D.M. Distillery on Partido Lerdo Street firsthand, at the invitation of Don Jose “Pepe” Gomez, the company’s general manager. Pepe Gomez was the grandfather of my cousins on their mother’s side and a nephew of the owner, Don Julian Gomez.
The factory is still there, barely standing, waiting for a generous patron to turn it into a museum. I believe it is well documented that the building shown in the photograph was designed by the Henry Trost architecture firm.
There is also photographic evidence of an earlier, much older Kentucky Bar located on Comercio Street, what is now 16 de Septiembre Avenue. So far, however, I have failed to find any evidence that it was related in any way to Pancho’s establishment.
The bigger picture is that we have a city where people already recognized and understood what “Kentucky” represented: horse racing, whiskey, and American progress. It was a familiar enough name that business owners used it, presumably because they thought it gave their establishments some sort of advantage.
Without documentary evidence connecting the Kentucky Hotel to Pancho’s bar, I can only speculate. But based on what I have found so far, the version of the story that makes the most sense is this:
There was a hotel “upstairs” named Kentucky Hotel. It may have burned down—or it may not have. Somehow, Pancho may have gotten his hands on the old hotel sign and used it for his own establishment, renaming it Kentucky Bar sometime around 1945 or 1946.
That would explain why the name appeared when it did, without requiring the bar itself to have existed since 1920.
The earliest record I have found so far of Pancho’s Kentucky Bar comes from an article in the El Paso Herald-Post by Bob Ingram, published July 16, 1953.
The article portrays Pancho as a sports promoter operating out of his bar, an easygoing character who had traveled extensively. By this point, the Kentucky Bar was already becoming much more than just another Juarez saloon.
History is like a “fountain,” as Robert “Bobby” Moran, owner of the Palmira Club, used to say: “Or history is not like a fountain. It all depends on what you’re looking for.”
In my case, I started pursuing the origin of a name and found the origin of a titan.
I found out about Pancho Montes in the newspaper archives before I found the Kentucky Bar. In the El Paso Herald-Post, you find his name first mentioned in 1945 in an article that describes him as “one of the Juarez club officials,” meaning the Indios de Juarez baseball team from back in the day.
In 1947 and 1948, he is mentioned seven times in relation to baseball activities. But in 1949, his mentions begin to appear in relation to boxing promotion—six articles about boxing and only one about baseball.
1950 was a big year for Pancho. He is mentioned 48 times for boxing and eight times for baseball—a total of 56 mentions just in the El Paso Herald-Post.
If you follow the number of times Pancho is mentioned in those articles, you get a sense of how long his career as a sports promoter lasted. It began in 1945, peaked in 1957, and ended around 1965.
Pancho spent 20 years of his life promoting young talent from the El Paso-Juarez community.
A truly great man.
This is Part 2 of a multi-part story. You can read Part 1 here.
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