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50  GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS  |  2020 – 2021 Doing business downtown for 35+ years Local shops with longevity By YS NEWS STAFF While half of all small businesses close within their first five years, many shops in Yellow Springs have defied those odds — and then some. The following downtown stores have been open for more than 35 years. Some have had multiple owners, but most have been helmed by a single proprietor. The Ye Olde Trail Tavern, founded around 1900 It’s both the town’s lon- gest running restaurant and its oldest surviving build- ing. And according to some accounts, it may be Ohio’s oldest tavern. The popular restaurant and bar, which locals refer to as “the Trail,” has been a tavern for at least the last 75 years, and possibly even longer, while the structure that houses it could be almost two centuries old. As befitting its age, the place is steeped in legend, including a few ghost stories. Everyone seems to agree that the rear section of the building, with its hand-hewn logs, was built before the front section, but sources differ as to when. According to research by its newest owners, Christine Monroe- Beard and Don Beard, it was built as a tavern and stagecoach stop in 1827 by one of the town’s first white settlers, Elisha Mills. Other sources date the building to the 1840s. The front part of the build- ing may have been moved from its original location near the Yellow Spring in 1847 by German-born Frank Hafner and his wife, Mary Ann Sroufe, as a residence and bakery, according to owner’s research. Its time as a restaurant may have started just before the 1900s, since a stipulation of Hafner’s will was that the tavern never again serve spirituous liquor. He died in 1895, followed by Sroufe in 1897, and it has been selling liquor ever since. According to News archives, it has operated continuously as a restaurant and bar since at least the 1940s. As for its latest incarnation, the new owners’ historical research inspired them to craft a new menu featuring some German specialties and street foods to honor its original German inhabitant — foods like sauerkraut balls, reuben sandwiches, German potato salad and schnitzel. Beard and Monroe-Beard, who also own Peach’s Grill and the Import House, purchased the tavern in 2017 from Cathy Christian, who had run it since 1986. Her father, Roger Hart, had owned it since 1980. Before that, it was owned by the Hafners’ descendants all the way until 1955. Christian told the News that when a building is as old as the tavern, “you’re not really the owner — you just manage it for a period of time.” The new owners, who undertook a significant renovation a few years back, feel similarly. “It’s a certain amount of responsibility to take care of the building and see it go into the future,” Monroe- Beard said. A stop on many ghost hunting tours, Ye Olde Trail Tavern has long been thought to be haunted. The building is said to host two separate apparitions. Accord - ing to local paranormal researcher Pam Adams, one is a blond woman in a blue period dress, seen smiling as she walks from the front to the rear of the building, who may be Sroufe. Another is a woman with long black hair in a long black dress weeping upstairs, thought to be her daughter-in-law, mourning for a lost love. Others say Hafner haunts the tavern, angry that his wish that it not sell alcohol was not followed. Many questions remain. Is it the oldest building in town? Do ghosts appear to employ- ees late at night? If only walls could talk. —Megan Bachman Epic Book Shop, founded 1966 Only one word can describe the history of the town’s oldest bookstore: Epic. Antioch College student Joe David Bellamy opened the Epic Book Shop in the King building (232 Xenia Ave.) as a used bookstore in 1966. In 1967, two recent impressive tenure of the town’s anchor stores, includ - ing its downtown grocery, pharmacy and hardware store, along with its movie theater, are covered else - where in this guide. This article focuses on smaller stores and restaurants. Over the decades these “local institutions” have met the needs of villagers and visitors, and given their owners a good living doing the good work of serving their community. PHOTO: ANTIOCHIANA, ANTIOCH COLLEGE The interior of Ye Olde Trail Tavern in an undated photo. PHOTO: MEGAN BACHMAN Epic Book Shop owner Gail Lichtenfels in 2014, 40 years after she first bought the business.