King's Tavern

Description

King's Tavern is an old bar located in downtown Natchez, Mississippi. It is currently open as a restaurant and bar. Mixology classes can be booked at The Tavern through Natchez Pilgrimage Tours. A package store and rum distillery are also in the works. New owners are Doug and Regina Charboneau. Regina is a nationally known chef with her original success on the west coast in San Francisco.HistoryPre-RevolutionThe King's Tavern building was built in 1769, making it the oldest structure in the old river port city of Natchez. When the British moved in and established the nearby Fort Panmure, the King's Tavern building was originally built to be a block house for the fort. As there was no saw mill near this frontier town, this building and other structures were constructed using beams taken from scrapped New Orleans sailing ships, which were brought to Natchez via mule. Another source of wood used in the King's Tavern building construction were barge boards from flat river boats, which were dismantled and sold after arriving in Natchez with their goods after traveling down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Boatmen couldn't take their flat boats back up these rivers, so they just added to their profit by selling the boats as wood, which was needed to build Natchez. Besides the wood, sun-dried bricks also were used as building material. The result is a building which has an ambiance and decor of another era from the outside. Though the outside of the Kings Tavern has the rustic 1780s