Tervan Tavern goes non-smoking

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

The Tervan Tavern, one of Sandpoint’s oldest bars, is making a change. Starting June 1, the Tervan will transition to non-smoking, leaving the Sand Bar the only bar left in Sandpoint that allows inside smoking.

Owner Daniela Caniglia said most of her regulars have been open to the shift after she broke the news.

“I have about 90% of the people I have talked to be supportive and actually excited about the change. I know I am,” Caniglia told the Reader. “I explain to the reg[ulars] that have been coming since the dawn of time that, ‘No, I am not changing the bar, but the bar air quality must change for the times.’”

Caniglia said that owning a bar that allowed smoking inside has presented several challenges since she purchased it in 2016.

“It’s extremely difficult to hire bartenders and keep them,” she said. “Twenty-five or 30 years ago, it was normal to smoke in a bar or restaurant and employees put up with it. The sign of the times dictates that not many people are willing to work for eight to nine hours in a smoky environment.”

Caniglia said she has developed a cough herself, which was disconcerting since she’s not a smoker. That helped inspire her to make the transition.

Going non-smoking will be the only substantial change at the bar for the time being.

“I won’t do much to scrub and clean after, just because the bar earned that yellow color,” she said. “It’s a dive bar. It still has to have a little dodgy dive feel. Maybe at a later date I’ll take down the dollar bills, turn them into local charities and paint the walls and ceiling, but for now it’ll remain as is.”

Caniglia said a couple of regulars did express alarm at the change, but she said she is sticking to her guns, telling them, “If you want the beer to stay cheap, I need more customers.”

The night crowd, which frequents karaoke and open mics, are “ecstatic,” she said, “because it’s so much easier to sing without the added pollution.”

Plans are in the works to install a small smoke shack outside with a heater for wintertime, which “eased some of the pushback from the ol’ timers,” Caniglia said.

The Tervan was traditionally a blue-collar watering hole for loggers, railroad workers and miners who frequented Sandpoint nearly a century ago. First opened in 1932 as the Tam O’Shanter, the Tervan operated under the same name until Caniglia bought it in 2016, altering the name to the bar’s moniker, which was always Tervan. It survived the Great Depression, several wars, a town transitioning to tourism, one buyout attempt from a hotel that wound up building around the dive bar and thousands of thirsty Sandpoint locals coming through its doors every day and night. 

As far as the origins of the iconic misspelled sign out front — which reads “tavern” on the west side and “tervan” on the east side — the unofficial story goes that two proprietors of the Tam O’Shanter had spent some time with a whiskey bottle the day they elected to mount the bar’s sign. With one of the inebriated men affixing the letters and the other holding the ladder, they finished the job and looked up at what they had done.

When someone pointed out they bungled the spelling of the word “tavern,” the men just laughed and said, “Well, that’s about right,” and went inside the bar, leaving the sign hanging that way going on nearly a century.