Mac’s Bar: new times, old customs
By Janna Goerdt
HTF Staff Writer
Jeremy Jesch. Photo by Janna Goerdt MOUNTAIN IRON – Jeremy Jesch knew a bit about the bar business.
After all, he had worked in, managed, and owned bustling college bars in Grand Forks, N.D. before moving to the Iron Range in 2004 with his girlfriend, a Range native. “I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got here,” Jesch said. And then one day, he walked into Mac’s Bar in Mt. Iron, and met co-owner Ronnie Belt.
Belt was tending a bar that had a long, long history. In an area where saloons and taverns have been a major part of life – in the early 1900s, Virginia had more than 50 saloons, while Hibbing supported 60 – Mac’s Bar is one of the longest continuously operating bars on the Range.
The establishment opened in 1933, just as Prohibition was waning, and the earliest pictures show a white-shirted employee standing before a bare bar and a display case filled with cigars.
Mac's Bar during the waning days of Prohibition in 1933. Submitted Photo One of the next pictures shows brothers and founders Lawrence and Donald MacGregor ready to pour from a row of spirits, and from then on, Mac’s was an Iron Range bar. The business survived the end of the Great Depression, and every cycle of Iron Range mining boom and bust since. And that’s the history Jesch inherited when he bought the bar from Belt and Duncan MacGregor, son of Lawrence, in 2006. Jesch recalls that his first encounter with Belt, who had co-owned Mac’s for nearly 30 years, was a bit abrupt. Jesch was enjoying a beverage as the evening hours waned. As dusk fell, Belt announced that he was tired, ready to close up, and would Jesch mind getting out.
But beneath that gruff exterior was a kind man who really cared about his customers – many of whom had been regulars at Mac’s for decades. So while Jesch already knew a lot about the business side of running a bar, Belt taught him about people. Jesch and Belt grew so close that Jesch gave an emotional eulogy during Belt’s funeral in 2008. “Ronnie taught me how important it is to treat people that come here with respect, and make sure they are happy when they leave,” Jesch said.
That was a big difference from the college bars in Grand Forks, where Jesch learned his business skills. In that environment, when thousands of new young people would cycle through the bars every four years, there wasn’t much connection between bar workers and bar customers. At Mac’s, where loyal patrons have been regular visitors “for longer than I’ve been alive,” Jesch said, making and keeping a connection is a must. Jesch wants to know that customers are going to be OK once they leave the bar, he said. Mac’s offers free cab rides home to customers who need it – and even the bartenders have taken patrons home safely, he said.
That may be one reason why Mac’s has endured all these decades, even as the workforce at the nearby Minntac taconite mine has dwindled and downtown Mountain Iron has suffered.
“It says so much about the loyalty of the customers,” Jesch said. He also credits a good relationship with Mt. Iron city officials, and even the local St. Louis County Sheriff’s deputies with making sure the business has a good relationship with its residential neighbors.
Duncan MacGregor has become one of those regular customers. MacGregor bought his uncle Donald and father, Lawrence, out of the bar in the 1970s, and he added Belt as a partner in 1978.
“Business was really good back then,” MacGregor said. “We had more working people; the miners, the construction guys. We saw the same people every day.”
Many of those regulars also contributed to the bar’s décor, which features taxidermy of all shapes and sizes – from an albino white-tailed deer to a wild boar to a two-headed calf to a huge bull moose taken down by Lawrence MacGregor. Most of the animals were hunted in the immediate area, MacGregor said; many of them from right in Mt. Iron.
The animals stayed after Jesch bought the bar, but he has made other changes. He reopened the bar kitchen, remodeled the interior, added a spacious outdoor patio, and has a long line-up of live musicians ready to take the new stage.
Adding frequent, original live music is one way Jesch hopes to attract a new base of loyal customers, something he knows needs to happen to be sure Mac’s survives.
“It’s changing,” MacGregor agreed. “There are a lot of people in there now that I don’t know, especially later in the day.”
Though he spends a lot of time working at a small resort he owns in Canada, when he is home in Mt. Iron, MacGregor visits Mac’s just about every day. He sits at the bar, sipping on his whisky and water and talking with the regulars he knows. But ask him to share his favorite memories made during Mac’s long history, and MacGregor just laughs.
“Some of the memories I have, I can’t tell you,” he said.
Mt. Iron Mayor Gary Skalko believes that Mac’s survived because it was always able to fill a “blue-collar niche” for working people in the Mt. Iron area. And since Jesch took over the bar, Skalko said he’s noticed an uptick in business.
“It’s had kind of a rebirth,” Skalko said, a positive sign because the bar is the only place left in downtown Mt. Iron to grab a bite to eat, he added.
