This Storied Texas Tavern Poured the First Legal Drink After Prohibition and Never Stopped

I will drive a long way for a bar that has genuinely earned its wrinkles. Not the themed kind with a distressed-on-purpose bar top, but the honest old rooms where the floorboards creak with real history and the jukebox has strong opinions.

You can feel the difference the second you walk in. Some bars try to sell you their history on a laminated card. The rare ones simply are history, still pouring the same way they did before your grandparents were born.

That is exactly what waits at Riley’s Tavern in the tiny community of Hunter, just north of New Braunfels. Step through the door and the worn-wood warmth greets you first, the ease of a room that has been comfortable for ninety years.

This is the bar that holds Texas Liquor License Number One, the very first drinking license the state handed out when Prohibition ended in 1933. It has been serving ever since, without a single gap.

Below, I want to walk you through why this little roadside tavern is one of the best history-soaked stops in Central Texas, from the midnight race to Austin that started it all to the live music that still fills the place most nights of the week.

License Number One, Won on the Capitol Steps

Here is the story that makes this place legendary, and it is even better than the license itself.

In September 1933, a local kid named James Curtis Riley was just 17 years old. Word got around that Texas would start issuing beer licenses the moment Prohibition was repealed, and young J.C. Riley decided he was going to be first in the whole state.

On September 13, he and his uncle climbed into a Model T Ford and drove the 38 miles to Austin. They arrived the night before the licenses were even available.

So they did the only sensible thing. They camped out on the cold steps of the Texas Capitol and waited for the doors to open, determined to be first when they did.

When the clock struck midnight and the doors opened, Riley was first in line. He walked away with Texas Liquor License No. 00001. A teenager from a town most Texans have never heard of had just made history without quite meaning to.

The tavern was founded by James Riley just days later, opening its doors on September 19, 1933. That license has never once lapsed in all the years since.

That is more than ninety years of continuous pouring, which makes this the oldest continuously licensed bar in Texas. Plenty of famous saloons are older, but every one of them went dark during Prohibition. Riley’s is the one that restarted the clock and never let it stop.

Current owner Joel Hofmann has a lovely way of describing what Riley pulled off. He points out that being first was not a big deal to Riley at the time.

Let enough years pass, though, and a teenager’s small accident of standing first in line quietly becomes a genuine piece of Texas history. That is exactly what happened here, one ordinary night at a time.

A Saloon Older Than the License Itself

Here is a fun wrinkle: the building was already old when Riley got his famous license.

The limestone structure has stood along this stretch of road since the 1800s, and long before Riley it operated as the Galloway Saloon. The family tie runs deep, too. Riley’s own mother was a Galloway, so in a sense he was carrying on a family trade in a family building.

Location was everything back then. Hunter sat almost exactly halfway between Austin and San Antonio on the old post road, right where the Missouri-Pacific Railroad built a stop to reach the water at York Creek.

That made the tavern a natural gathering spot for the whole area. Cotton farmers and cattle ranchers came in off the fields, and train passengers and rail crews stopped through on their way up and down the line.

Riley welcomed everyone through those doors, drawing a mix of customers from every background at a time when plenty of Texas rooms did not. The place stayed busy for decades on that steady stream of locals and travelers.

Did you know? For years this corner sat just inside the Comal County line, which mattered enormously back when whether you could legally buy a drink depended entirely on which side of a county road you happened to be standing.

From J.C. Riley to a New Chapter

Riley himself ran the tavern for an astonishing 58 years. He worked the bar until 1991, when illness finally forced him to step back and sell the place he had built his whole life around.

He did not get to enjoy much rest. Riley passed away in 1992 and was buried at York Creek Cemetery, only about two miles from the front door of his tavern. He stayed close to home to the very end.

The new owners could have gutted the place and modernized it into something unrecognizable. Instead they leaned into exactly what made it special. A beer garden went in out back, and live music became the heartbeat of the room, running nearly every night of the week.

By 2005 the tavern had passed to Joel Hofmann, who has kept that same spirit going. When Riley’s rolled past its 90th birthday, it was still standing, still pouring, and still packed with people who treat it like a second living room.

The state has since recognized what locals always knew. A Texas historical marker now stands at the site, telling the license story to travelers who pull over for a look before they ever order a drink.

Why the Music Never Really Stops

Walk in on almost any night and you will hear it before you see it. Riley’s has become one of the most beloved live music rooms in the Hill Country, with two stages, one inside and one out on the back patio under the trees.

The lineup runs Wednesday through Sunday, and the talent that has passed through is remarkable for such a small room. Over the years the tavern has hosted the likes of Willie Nelson, George Strait, and Townes Van Zandt, names any Texas music fan knows by heart.

It still draws today’s crowd, too. Randy Rogers filmed a music video right here, and up-and-coming songwriters treat a Riley’s booking like a rite of passage worth bragging about.

My favorite tradition is the Sunday picker’s circle. Musicians gather round, trade songs, and play for the pure joy of it, and anyone with a good ear and a cold drink is welcome to pull up a chair and listen.

Part of the magic is the setting itself. On a warm Texas night the crowd spills out to the beer garden, the band plays under the trees, and the dance floor fills with two-steppers of every age.

It is the kind of easy, unhurried scene that has mostly vanished from bigger cities. You understand pretty quickly why regulars build whole weekends around a single Riley’s show, and why so many of them never really leave.

One longtime performer, Bo Porter, summed up the pull of the place perfectly. He said even the great artists keep coming back because playing Riley’s feels like coming home. You can hear that easy familiarity in the room.

The Kind of Regulars You Only Get After 90 Years

A bar this old collects more than memorabilia. It collects people, whole generations of them.

Oralia Torres has been coming to Riley’s for more than fifty years. She still remembers founder J.C. Riley himself, and how he would hand the kids peppermint candy or bubble gum whenever the family came through. That is the kind of detail no marketing team could ever invent.

The walls hold up their end of the storytelling. They are covered in old photographs, signed pictures, and artifacts from the artists who have played the stages, a scrapbook you can read while you nurse a cold beer.

Regular Misty Price puts the appeal in the simplest terms. She loves the people and she loves the environment, and she says the energy of the place is just great. After a visit or two, you stop being a visitor here and start being a regular.

What to Do Once You Get There

Riley’s is refreshingly unfussy about how you spend your time. This is a tavern, not a restaurant, and it leans all the way into the classic Texas honky-tonk experience.

There is no kitchen, but that is by design. A food truck rolls up and parks outside several days a week, so you grab your dinner out front and carry it back inside to your table without missing a single song.

The games are half the fun. There are pool tables and shuffleboard, and Mondays bring free pool, which is about the most Texas way I can think of to start a week. There is usually no cover charge to get in, either.

Pro tip: come for a weekend evening if you want the full experience, with a band on the stage and the beer garden humming. If you would rather soak up the history in peace, an early afternoon visit lets you actually study those wall photos before the crowd arrives.

The doors open daily at 1 in the afternoon and stay open until midnight, with Saturdays running an extra hour to 1 in the morning. Indoor smoking is still allowed, which is part of what keeps the old honky-tonk atmosphere so intact.

It is genuinely a room for young and old alike, the sort of place a grandparent and a grandkid can both love for their own reasons. You come for one drink and a look at the walls, and somehow the whole afternoon slips happily away.

How to Get There

Riley’s Tavern sits in Hunter, an unincorporated speck between Austin and San Antonio, and it is an easy detour off Interstate 35 near New Braunfels.

Where: 8894 FM 1102, New Braunfels, TX 78132

Aim for the exits north of New Braunfels and follow FM 1102 until the little limestone tavern appears on the roadside. If you arrive near dark and hear a guitar drifting out of the beer garden, you have found the right place.

Raise One Where Texas History Started Pouring

There are fancier bars in Texas and there are newer ones, but there is only one that can say it holds License Number One and has never stopped serving since the day Prohibition ended.

So plan your drive, bring a friend who appreciates a good story, and go raise a glass in the exact spot where legal drinking in Texas began. Just save yourself time to read the walls, and try not to lose track of your evening once the music starts.

Featured image: Dallas Turner via Riley’s Tavern