Around 1880, this building housed Carbonado’s first post office, and at different times it also held a barber shop and a dentist, while standing as a close relative to the Carbon Hill Coal Company’s brick store across Pershing Avenue. The company owned the town’s homes and the Canteen, the first watering hole in Carbonado, and miners were paid in script, with rent deducted from weekly pay and the remainder spent at the company store or the Canteen, often leaving them in debt. During the peak mining years, Carbonado had three taverns, and miners also brewed moonshine in the surrounding forests; although private liquor or beer was illegal, the company tolerated it rather than risk conflict, so long as miners and their families followed company rules. Carbonado’s mines declined during the Great Depression, and the coal company ended operations in 1937, after which the homes were sold and the Canteen continued under private ownership. In the 1940s and 50s, adults could buy bottled and canned beer there while children found a Coca Cola cooler and candy counter, later draft beer arrived, and in the 1990s hard liquor appeared on the back bar. Known over time as the Canteen, then the Tavern, and now the Carbonado Saloon, it has served locals and visitors for more than 130 years in a town that once had one of the biggest mining operations on the Pacific Coast and is now one of Washington’s smallest incorporated towns.