A line stretches out the door as patrons visit Dark Horse during its final days. March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
On Tuesday night, the line at Boulder’s World Famous Dark Horse wrapped around the dark brick building and snaked through the pothole-riddled parking lot. The unusually large crowd wasn’t there to drink away a mid-week evening, nor were they there to try the bar’s iconic chicken wings or watch a crowd of students belt out karaoke classics.
A line stretches out the door as patrons visit Dark Horse during its final days. March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
They were there to pay their respects to the Dark Horse in its last days of life.
Upstairs, in the small wood-panelled hallway connecting rooms teeming with Boulderites playing one last round of pool, Kate Hope and Dylan Fisher sat beneath half a century’s worth of signatures scribbled along the walls and ceiling. The pair had their first date here seven years ago, and have since become regulars, forging friendships with the bar’s employees, who stop in the cramped hallway to chat with Hope one last time.
“I’m devastated,” she said.
And she’s not the only one.
Names are carved on many of the walls of Dark Horse. March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
The Dark Horse has amassed a cult following throughout its 51 years of service. Some have been visiting for decades, like longtime Boulder County resident Craig Gilmer, who says he and his friends “ruled the foosball table” back in the 1970s.
“It’s like hearing about an old friend passing on,” he said.
Inception and demise?
The World Famous Dark Horse opened in Boulder in 1975, as part of the Great American Fair restaurant chain, a Santa Monica-based company known for decorating its locations with old movie props and memorabilia.
Washington’s Sports Bar & Grill was another such location in Fort Collins. Also known for its eclectic style, it closed in 2016 to be turned into a music venue.
Among locals, the love for the Dark Horse begins with its ambiance.
A cluttered and historic Dark Horse is filled to capacity during its final days on March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
Inside, old wagons and buggies hang from the ceiling, huge burger and clown statues loom over you, animal heads look down at you and the photos and scratchings on the wall tell the stories of students for over half a century.
Some frequented the Dark Horse for typical bar games — pool, darts and foosball. Others remember Thursday night karaoke, sloppy tricycle races and even, way back in the day, hermit crab racing.
The restrooms at Dark Horse are labelled with slightly confusing signage. March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
However, to many locals’ disappointment, Dark Horse ownership announced in early February via a Facebook post that March 14, their 51st anniversary, would also be its last night open.
The site is slated for the development of Williams Village II, a new student housing development for the University of Colorado Boulder. The plans boast 427 new housing units and nearly 60,000 square feet of commercial space. In 2024, when developers presented their plans to the city, many community members objected.
Tim Plass, the executive director for Historic Boulder Inc., a non-profit that advocates for the preservation of historic buildings, says he will miss the Dark Horse deeply.
“It’s just such an amazing collection, like a museum,” he said.
Over the past few months, Plass and other members of Historic Boulder had several events to raise awareness about the closure of Dark Horse, but it seems that they were too late.
“The forces of development are moving through that area of town as they are, through many parts of town, and so there was really no way to save it,” Plass said.
According to Plass, the event serves as a “wakeup call” and says that the non-profit is moving to advocate for the preservation of legacy businesses at risk, as well as other buildings moving forward.
“When I moved here in the 1980s, there was a lot more of that funkiness, and as we’ve gotten more affluent, we’ve lost that,” Plass said. “I mourn that we’re losing that kind of identity and uniqueness that really made Boulder special, and this is another piece of that.”
As for now, it is unclear if Dark Horse will ever reopen at a new location or what will happen to all of the decorations inside.
But many remain optimistic that the restaurant will in some way come back, citing the seemingly hopeful end to the post announcing its closure. “We hope to see you again, in another time and another place. Stay tuned,” it reads.
Keeping Boulder weird and well-fed
Now, Boulderites are mourning this long history right alongside their own memories.
For Susan Weiss, a patron of the Dark Horse for over 30 years, the bar first began as a Friday night spot for drinks and dancing with her husband, Howard. Over time, it’s become a hub for family dinners and the creator of inside jokes with her children, including one revolving around the urinal that hangs from the Dark Horse’s ceiling.
A urinal hangs from the ceiling of Dark Horse. March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
“My one son always wanted to sit under the toilet, and it was so funny,” she shared. “The kids would just stare up at the ceiling and the walls. Some of the things on the walls were very inappropriate for little kids, so we’d have to distract them. But who cares? It was just so fun and memorable.”
To Weiss and many others, the closure also represents an even larger, more pressing concern: the steady loss of affordable places in Boulder County.
“With the price of everything going up, the fact that you could still go there and get a super good burger and fries for 10 bucks is absolutely amazing,” she said.
In 1990, the year before Weiss first visited the Dark Horse, Boulder’s cost of living was 6.3% higher than the national average. Today, the Economic Research Institute estimates the city’s cost of living to be 32% higher than the national average.
As a college town staple, many of the bar’s affordable deals specifically catered to students.
“The ‘starving student meal’ is a really good deal,” said Lars Lundberg, a recent CU Boulder graduate. “I would get that all the time. It feels like things like that are kind of rare to see in the city now.”
Dark Horse offers a student meal deal. March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
Without them, Boulder faces a gap in cheaper, student-centered meal options.
“The other (affordable) places are kind of few and far between,” echoed Jack Kliegerman, a senior at the university.
But the Dark Horse hasn’t just been keeping patrons affordably full all these years; it’s also been a staple of Boulder’s iconic, quirky culture, with walls full of faux taxidermied safari animals hung alongside nude art.
Animal heads are a common kind of decor in Dark Horse. March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
Various antiques decorate the inside of Dark Horse. March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
Art lines the walls of Dark Horse. March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
“Beyond cost, it did just have a character to it that you can’t really replicate anywhere else,” Kliegerman said.
That character has kept patrons like Kliegerman coming back for more, and passing the tradition down to the next generation of Boulder residents and CU students.
“My mom went to the Dark Horse when she was in college in the 80s,” he said. “It’s one of those generational things.”
With that longstanding history came dependability the county could count on, until now.
“It was one of the few places in Boulder where you felt like it was an institution. It really was somewhere everyone knew about, everyone could feel like they’re having a good time,” Kliegerman said. “Everything else in your life might not be going to plan, but you can always go to the Dark Horse.”
Much like Plass and Historic Boulder, Lundberg agrees that the closure is just one casualty of a larger shift in the city’s culture.
“It’s a sign of the changing times in Boulder where things are growing really fast and at the cost of some things that people really care about,” he said.
Some of this growth, Lundberg feels, doesn’t fit in with old-school Boulder’s charm.
“Everything’s becoming more corporatized in Colorado and in Boulder. There’s just so much demand, and they’re keeping up with it by sucking the soul out of things,” he said. “The Limelight Hotel feels very corporate, and it’s just right there up by The Hill, which is a very iconic area… Just in the three-and-a-half years I’ve been living in Boulder, things have changed a lot, very quickly.”
A final plea to keep Dark Horse open is displayed at the bar on March 12, 2026. (Sagan Randall/CU Independent)
So tonight, as yet another major change descends on the city, the Dark Horse’s line will descend the block one last time.
And when the clock strikes 10:00 — an earlier closing time for the bar’s last night in operation — Boulder will lose the longstanding institution.
“It feels like the end of an era,” Lundberg said.
Contact CU Independent Special Investigations Editor Jessi Sachs at jessica.sachs@colorado.edu
Contact CU Independent Editor-in-Chief Greta Kerkhoff at greta.kerkhoff@colorado.edu
