Larry Krask was pulling a double when he started feeling funny. 

The co-owner of the ’49er Saloon in Acton was working in the kitchen on a Sunday night in June 2022 when some repetitive twinges started back up again in his chest. A few months prior, he had visited a local walk-in clinic where they told him it was acid reflux, so the chef was back in the restaurant filling orders. 

The historic saloon, situated along the backside of the San Gabriel Mountains near the mouth of the Mojave Desert, pulls people off the highway with its home-style cooking served inside a picturesque Western false-front building. Krask and his wife Cecilia Manst-Krask took over in 2017, inheriting a storied legacy they’ve started adding to. 

When Krask woke up the following Monday morning, he downed a couple of antacids to quell the aches as he prepped in the kitchen. When the pangs didn’t quit by the afternoon, Manst-Krask demanded he visit a different doctor. He drove himself to UCLA urgent care 45 minutes away in Santa Clarita for the second opinion. 

When the doc asked how long he’d felt the sharp pains, Krask said since 8:30 p.m. the previous night. That’s when Krask was rushed to the nearest hospital, texting his wife from the back of the ambulance as it maneuvered through Los Angeles traffic. 

He wasn’t going to return to the saloon that night; he was in the middle of his second heart attack in 24 hours.

Krask ultimately recovered and started a new health care regimen. The night he returned to the ’49er Saloon for the first time since his dual cardiac arrests, he took a dry-erase pen to the whiteboard next to the front entrance. 

The sign normally welcomes guests with a “Howdy y’all” and a list of the day’s specials, but Krask wanted his return to come with a side of pizazz. 

“I wrote on the board, ‘I’m such an overachiever. I gotta have two heart attacks,’” he tells SFGATE outside the saloon on an October evening.

The story of a chef who worked through two heart attacks is now added to the dusty chapters of the ’49er Saloon. The husband and wife owners inherited a storied legacy that started in the wake of the California Gold Rush and outlasted a biker gang shootout in the 1970s.

Today, it’s equal parts saloon and restaurant. The meatloaf with a sweet barbecue glaze gets top billing on the menu, as do the corn fritters, which are made with a recipe from a 19th century cookbook to complement the Western iconography. 

A central fireplace separates the dining room from the saloon, where a golden belt buckle is enshrined in proxy on the bar. The barroom ceiling is covered in dollar bills with personalized messages scribbled in Sharpie. “Jeff <3 trouble” reads a dollar bill. 

The trend started about seven years ago when a local named Jason, whose mother was once a waitress for the ’49er Saloon, first thought to stick a buck into the wooden overhang. “It’s somewhere in the abyss,” he says, gesturing to the hundred dangling dollars. 

The ’49er Saloon began hosting gold miners and cowboys from a tiny town called Acton in 1889, when railroad ties were stacked underneath a nearby building to form its original foundation.

Acton hugs the Santa Clara River and falls within the 30-mile zone, or TMZ, which movie studios use as a geographical boundary for determining how employees are paid. It’s cheaper to shoot within the studio zone so Acton often appears in movies, series and music videos. 

Well before Hollywood, the first industry to lure folks to the rural community was mining, particularly gold and copper starting in the 19th century. 

The saloon persisted into the 20th century and even managed to survive a wild shootout in 1972 that left 11 arrested, five injured and, miraculously, zero dead. 

At the time, Jo Anne Darcy (who’d go on to become Santa Clarita’s mayor decades later) ran the bar and was working there on a Saturday night in December when a fight broke out. The Vagos Motorcycle Club attempted to retaliate against the town’s gas station owner who allegedly refused to sell them gasoline. Several gunshots ensued, including a ricochet off an overhead beam that hit a hand, plus a gruesome kidnapping.

Darcy recalled the aftermath in a 1991 letter to the editor and questioned the eventless outcome. “What happened to justice in this case?” she wrote. “The perpetrators went free, and the victims remained prisoners to their pain, monetary, job and business losses, and the unforgettable memory of having survived a terrible night in Acton.”

The saloon fell into a slump in the years that followed. The name even changed, losing the saloon to become the ’49er Bar and Grill. A former owner was accused of pouring cheap liquor in expensive bottles and the rustic relic was in need of a shine and a new vision.

Krask and Manst-Krask met in Illinois while working at a nightclub in the late 1980s. They fell in love following a first-date kiss on the forehead, married a few years later and became owners of a tavern in a town outside Chicago. They came out to California first with dreams of Hollywood before discovering the saloon one afternoon while exploring the backroads. 

The saloon was available and although it was in need of remodel, they took it after a 10-minute tour with the broker. 

“It was just cool. Through all the grease and grime, you could feel the history,” Manst-Krask says. “It just needed some love — 5.5 months of love — but that’s all it needed. We could see past everything to what it could become.”

Certain locals were slow to adopting the couple as the new saloon stewards — “We had someone say, ‘You need to change your ice; it’s not cube-y enough,’” Manst-Krask says — however, their pivot to a more family-friendly atmosphere and thoughtful menu won over naysayers. The Acton Community Council notes that the ’49er Saloon remains “a community fixture” following the remodel and expansion.

They’ve introduced a vegan menu, including a cheese stick recipe they’ve made for years that customers often mistake for breaded egg rolls based on how it looks. They make them from scratch, just like the glistening meatloaf that’s prepared twice a day.

A caller once placed an order for spaghetti but never arrived to pick it up. When Krask called them back, he learned that the person mistakenly thought the restaurant was located near the Bay Area due to the 49ers name. 

Although Krask and Manst-Krask have embraced California and are adding to Acton’s legacy, they haven’t shaken their hometown roots. Asked who they root for on Sundays, Krask cracks one his wide smiles: It’s the Chicago Bears.