EST. BY LEGEND · COLORADO ROCKY MOUNTAINS

John North’s

LEGENDARY SMOKE & FIRE

BBQ as the West Intended It

THE MYTH & LEGEND OF JOHN WESLEY NORTH

Now, history books will tell you that John Wesley North was a lawyer, an abolitionist, a city founder, and one of Abraham Lincoln’s most trusted frontier men. They will note he founded Northfield, Minnesota, helped write Nevada’s constitution, and eventually laid down roots all across the American West. What the history books — with their suspicious tidiness — conspicuously omit is the part about the brisket.

The legend goes like this: Somewhere around 1863, while North was serving as Nevada’s first Surveyor General and mapping the wild, unruly land around the Comstock Lode, he found himself utterly lost in a canyon south of present-day Colorado — which, to be fair, was not yet a state and had no obligation to be easy to navigate. His horse had opinions about the situation. His compass did not. For three days, John North followed his nose through high-altitude juniper scrub, surviving on jerky and principle.

On the fourth morning, he stumbled upon a Ute encampment whose cook — a man the explorers reportedly called “the Professor” on account of his absolute authority over fire — had slow-cooked an elk shoulder over a pit of smoldering piñon pine and mountain sage for the better part of two days. The smoke had turned the meat the color of a Colorado sunset. The fat had rendered into something that a lesser man might have wept over.

North, ever the politician, offered the Professor something in trade: a proper iron kettle, two fine tobacco pipes, and a letter of legal introduction that — though unenforceable in a territory that barely existed yet — was written in extraordinarily impressive cursive. In exchange, the Professor shared the three things that would haunt John North for the rest of his wandering days: low heat, long time, and good wood.

North spent the remainder of his years applying these principles with the same restless energy he brought to law, abolitionism, and town-founding. He reportedly built a pit behind his house in Riverside, California that his neighbors alternately loved and complained about, depending on wind direction. His wife Ann — a fierce temperance advocate who tolerated a great many things — drew the line at a second pit. He built it anyway.

John Wesley North died in Fresno on February 22, 1890, a man who had founded cities, shaped constitutions, and fed more people than most governments. He left behind no BBQ recipe, no pit diagrams, and no written instructions — only the legend, the philosophy, and the lingering smell of smoke on everything he owned.

The owners of this establishment pay tribute to the great wandering idealists of the American West, who understood that the most important things in life — justice, community, and a properly smoked rack of ribs — cannot be rushed. We do not rush them. We trust the fire, respect the smoke, and remember John North every time someone closes their eyes at the first bite.

JOHN NORTH’S BBQ

This is a work of myth and tribute. John Wesley North (1815–1890) was a real and remarkable American — abolitionist, city founder, and frontier statesman. The BBQ part? That’s ours. But somehow, it feels exactly right.

John North’s BBQ · Colorado Rocky Mountains