For 80 years, the Wheel Bar has been an icon on Elkhorn Avenue in downtown Estes Park. The community is invited to celebrate that anniversary today from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. with food and drinks.
Mike Nagl, who owned a fledgling neon sign business, came to Estes in 1945. According to legend, Nagl sought solace one afternoon in the Estes Park Beer Parlor and overheard owner Ben Vance complain loudly about cleaning out the brass cuspidors, “If some dummy would come along and buy this place, I’d sell it.”
Before he left, Nagl bought the place in a handshake deal.
Initially, the establishment was renamed Mike’s Tavern, but on April 1, 1954, after a community contest, the name was changed to The Wheel Bar because it had become the town’s business and social hub.
The contest winner was “Mrs. Frank Miller” of Estes Park, who received a $25 prize. One of the entries suggested the bar be Krap Setse – Estes Park spelled backwards.
Born Orlando Michael Nagl in 1914 in Carroll, Iowa, Nagl married Margaret Brannen in 1938 in Oregon. Their son Michael was born in 1940. After his first wife died in 1943, he married Leola “Lee” Byrnes from Dennison, Iowa, in 1946 in Estes Park, at the old St. Walter’s Catholic Church. The couple had three children, Kay, Steve, and Toni, born at Dr. J.O. Mall’s hospital on Elkhorn Avenue.
Over the years, Mike, who many called “OM,” ran the bar, and Lee did the bookkeeping.
The bar was damaged on Dec. 7, 1955, when a fire began at the Estes Park Electric Shop. The fire was first noticed around 4 p.m. at the alley entrance to the electric shop on the back side of the building and spread to the Riverside Hotel above the bar.
By 6 p.m., firefighters thought the blaze had been extinguished, but a few hours later, flames flared back up. Firefighters from the Estes Park Volunteer Fire Department, the National Park Service, Loveland, and Longmont battled the flames in near-zero conditions and strong winds until about 6 a.m. The hotel was destroyed, and the bar sustained significant damage.
In 1955, Nagl and his brother Al bought the Friendly Irishman, Nevada’s oldest used car dealership. Three years later, they sold the Las Vegas-based dealership and purchased the Flying Scott Marine, a boat sales and supply business in Las Vegas. Nagl spent summers in Estes and wintered in Las Vegas for many years.
During his half-century in Estes, Nagl was recognized for his involvement in numerous charitable and community activities, including purchasing the first organ for Our Lady of the Mountain’s Catholic Church and promoting the annual March of Dimes campaign. He organized a footrace called The Wheel Streak to help fund the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts to build the Visitor Information Center. He was instrumental in the community’s fundraising to construct the hospital. In 1964, he started The Wheel Open, the largest nonprofit golf tournament in the state.
The Nagls acquired a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in 1966 with a long-time bartender, Pat McCarey. Today, the former KFC building is the Smokin’ Dave’s BBQ location on Moraine Avenue. The Other Room was added to the rear of the bar in 1969, and in 1972, Orlando’s Steaks opened above the bar.
His son Steve took over as the owner and manager in 1977, and in 1992, the business was sold to the four Nagl children. Today, the Wheet is owned by Mike and Lee’s grandson, Ty Nagl.
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