Sometime in the late 1940s — the exact date escapes me at the moment — a Memphian named William Ohman opened a Western-themed restaurant in Memphis. He called it the Ohman Ranch House, and though the first one (by all accounts) was rather plain inside and out, in 1948 he opened a much larger operation on Madison near Cleveland.
"An atmosphere of the Old West permeates the place," said a newspaper article. You entered by pulling the trigger on an old six-shooter mounted on the front door, and patrons found themselves in a rustic "saloon" complete with rough wood-plank walls, and lighting that looked like kerosene lamps. Outside, a spinning wagon wheel painted gold "pointed in the direction of Texas," though I'm not really sure what that means.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Ohman expanded his operation, opening other Ranch Houses around town, and the fanciest of these was the one you see here, located at 2439 Summer, near Hollywood. When it opened in 1952, the Memphis Press-Scimitar gushed about the "Spanish-style building with a courtyard walled in brick and cypress and planted with yucca and tiny palms."
Inside, diners found the same Spanish/Western motif, with lots of wooden beams and rope and harnesses and cattle horns and wagon wheels and "kerosene" lamps and other "ranch" artifacts, and once again you tugged on a pistol handle to open the front door. But the owners did allow one modern concession: the place was air-conditioned.
The back of this postcard advertised that the Ranch House featured "THE BIG TWENTY — a selection of twenty special dishes,— from choice steaks, lobster tails, shrimp, spaghetti in an iron skillet to tasty sandwiches."
The Ohman Ranch Houses thrived during the 1950s and 1960s, but for whatever reason, Memphians gradually lost interest in Old West dining, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1970. The restaurant you see here housed an antique store for years, called the Trading Post. Still keeping with that Western theme, I guess.
