Ruth’s Diner – Emigration Canyon, Utah
2007 marks the seventy seventh anniversary of Ruth’s Diner and makes it the second oldest Restaurant in Utah Unfortunately, Ruth didn’t live to see it. She passed away in November of 1989 at the age of 94. She was a great story teller–a spirited woman whose language could embarrass a gangster.
As a young woman, she was very pretty, shown by the photos on the diner wall. Ruth performed in some of the bars around Salt Lake City as a cabaret singer from about 1912 to 1916. She tells of being dragged off the stage one night by a jealous woman with a fierce grip on her hair, although “the biddy regretted herself for some time to come.”
In 1930 she started the diner as Ruth’s Hamburgers downtown in the Meredith Building at 120 East Second South. The location was directly across the street from a very small house of ill repute and Ruth fed the girls and listened to their stories about various police, politicians, judges and other clients.
After many years of flipping burgers downtown, her building was sold and demolished. So she bought a Salt Lake Trolley car and moved it up Emigration Canyon where she reopened in 1949. Ruth built an apartment onto the back of her trolley car (it’s now the lower dining area and kitchen) and lived on the property alone with her Chihuahua dogs for almost forty years.
Ruth was extremely independent but did make two known concessions late in her life. When she turned eighty, she switched from Lucky Strikes to a filtered cigarette, and she finally placated the health department by posting a hand written sign on the wall next to the door which read “No Smoking Section – First Bar Stool Only.”
During the 50’s and 60’s, Ruth’s became a familiar stop for the fraternity boys looking for a cold beer and some local color. ID’s weren’t carefully checked since Ruth didn’t think any more of that law than she did the new smoking ordinances. “They can enforce their own laws!” Her dogs were just as spirited as she was and often tried to bite any customers they didn’t know.
Although she sold the diner in 1977 (to one of the college boys who’d been a regular for 20 years), Ruth lived out her last years in the duplex behind the diner. On her 90th birthday, a waitress paid Ruth a visit after her shift. She sat down on the couch, but felt something hard. She reached between the cushions and found a gun. She said, “Ruth, this gun is loaded!” Ruth replied, “Well, it wouldn’t do me any damn good if it wasn’t.”
Visiting a friend in Salt Lake City, we drove through the Emigation Canyon area and stopped at Ruth’s for a beer. Didn’t get to meet Ruth, but just pulling in and seeing a trolly car atop a mountain, you know you’ve found a place with history.
