Donovan's Copper Bar - closed

Donovan with the bank

I found a series of tales of John Donovan, the colorful owner of DCB going back into the 60s, so it's legend was secure. From the 50th anniversary Vail Tales:

John was a great host and beer was cheap, three 11-ounce beers for a buck. And he’d give a guy a break, like Larry Benway. Benway was fighting with Vail Associates for a pay raise for the ski patrol. He didn’t get it, so John said he’d give them one. “The first drink was free for ski patrollers, blue coats, yellow jackets – anyone who worked on the mountain,” John said. “A lot of them are still around and they used to drink a lot. Thankfully they didn’t quit drinking until they put my kids through college.”

“The day I had to close my bar for one day, that was a terrible day,” Donovan said... The actual offense is lost to winds of history, but Vail’s Powers That Be decided John’s liquor license would be suspended one day. John lobbied for his birthday, Nov. 4, and got it. Turns out that Nov. 4 that year was also Election Day, and in those days bars were closed on Election Day anyway.

They [John and Diana] were married in August 1967. John ran a full page ad in the paper inviting everyone in the county the wedding reception in the brand new Manor Vail. About 1,000 people showed up, some on horseback.

No one in Vail had phones back then, so moms or wives would call Donovan’s looking for someone, and that someone would usually say they weren’t there. But everyone was there on July 20, 1969, when astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stepped down from the Apollo 11 lunar module and became the first humans to set foot on the moon. “There were no TVs in bars and we’d just gotten TV to the valley. John hurried around to get it hooked up so people could watch the moon landing,” Diana said. The Vail Trail reported, “Even John Donovan and Bob Porter were held speechless.”

Further digging shows John Donovan was still a ski instructor and local business owner in a blog post from 2015. A Vail news release gives three pages of facts on Donovan, including the fact he bought the bar in '66, and it closed in '82 due to the landlord selling the place. 

Colorful man, and one who has served his community well. 

What used to be Donovan's Copper Bar is now Vendetta's, but since they closed him down to open a new place, this is a closed instead of evolved. 

Snowshoe

• 3/4 oz. brandy
• 3/4 oz. white creme de menthe

Pour over ice and stir.