LAFAYETTE, CALIFORNIA — Long before Lafayette became a polished East Bay suburb of brunch spots, boutiques, SUVs and BART commuters, there was a bar on Mt. Diablo Boulevard where horses could pull up out front.
Sometimes, people even brought their horses inside for a drink!
That bar is still there.
The Roundup Saloon, the squat, wood-fronted, cash-only landmark at 3553 Mt. Diablo Boulevard, has been part of Lafayette since 1935. According to the Lafayette Historical Society, the Roundup is Lafayette’s oldest continuously operating business, and it marked its 90th anniversary in 2025.
It is hard to overstate how strange — and wonderful — that is. Lafayette has changed from a dusty farm town into one of the Bay Area’s most affluent communities. The old rural road became a downtown corridor. Horses gave way to cars, BART, Teslas, and morning coffee runs. But the Roundup is still standing, still pouring drinks, still cash-only, and still carrying a piece of old Lafayette inside its walls.
It Started With Lou’s Bar
The story begins with Lou Borghesani, a horseman and local character who opened Lou’s Bar after the end of Prohibition, then built what became the Roundup at 3553 Mt. Diablo Boulevard in 1935.
Prohibition had ended in December 1933, and by the mid-1930s Lafayette was still a very different place. The Lafayette Historical Society notes that Mt. Diablo Boulevard was previously known as Tunnel Road, and that cattle were still being driven through town in the 1920s by farmers taking them toward Berkeley and Emeryville. (Lafayette Historical Society)
Historical accounts say Lou kept a hitching post and water trough out front, plus carrots behind the bar for the horses. The old line attributed to him was that every horse got a carrot, and every rider got a beer if he stayed on his horse.
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A Bar From Lafayette’s Rural Era
The Roundup’s origin story fits neatly into Lafayette’s older identity as a crossroads community. The City of Lafayette’s own history notes that the commercial center of town grew around the present-day area of Mt. Diablo Boulevard and Moraga Road, with early businesses including a blacksmith shop, a bar, a general store, and rooming houses. (lovelafayette.org)
By 1937, the Historical Society says the main streets were paved and marked with lane lines — but still had no stop signs or traffic lights. A 1930s image from the Historical Society shows Mt. Diablo Boulevard near Johnny’s Roundup Saloon, with more cars appearing in town but still a world away from today’s Lafayette traffic.
A 1977 Lafayette Historical Society oral history captures the atmosphere. Mickey Meyers, who came to Lafayette in 1936, remembered Lou Borghesani’s bar and restaurant as a crowded gathering place where “everybody in Lafayette” seemed to go. On Saturday nights, he recalled, the place was packed; on New Year’s Eve, you might get in the door but never reach the bar.
From Lou’s to Johnny’s Roundup
The Roundup went through several identities and owners over the decades.
According to Lafayette Historical Society material published in Greet Lafayette, Lou sold the bar in the early 1940s to Harry Costa. Later, J.W. “Johnny” Combs renamed it Johnny’s Roundup and helped cement its reputation as the “Horseman’s Rendezvous.”
In 1977, Bill McCabe and Mike Content bought the bar. According to Greet Lafayette’s history, they came in with no bar experience and learned on the job, introducing 10-cent beer nights, charter buses to Giants games with barbecue tailgates, and annual June parties with free food and kegs.
Lamorinda Weekly reported that McCabe owned the Round Up for close to 30 years, and that he was responsible for installing the shuffleboard table — still one of the bar’s defining features. (Lamorinda Weekly)
By the 1970s, the Roundup had also developed a rougher, biker-bar reputation. SFGATE, in a 2026 feature, described how the bar had evolved from a rural horseman hangout into a place associated with Harleys and bikers before settling into its current role as Lamorinda’s last true dive bar. (SFGATE)
The Johnson Era
The current owners, Mike and Karen Johnson, bought the Roundup in 2004. Karen had first taken a part-time job there in 1994 while paying for culinary school, and later she and Mike took over from outgoing owner Bill McCabe.
They did not try to turn it into a sleek cocktail lounge. That is the point.
The bar still has pool, shuffleboard, taxidermy, old beer signs, snapshots, and the kind of accumulated visual clutter that cannot be designed into a new restaurant buildout. It has to happen over decades. As Karen told Greet Lafayette, each piece on the wall means something to someone.
The bar doesn’t accept credit cards and has no website. It’s truly still living in the 1930s.
Why It Still Matters
The Roundup has survived because it has resisted becoming something else.
In a city where almost everything on Mt. Diablo Boulevard has been remodeled, replaced, renamed, or polished up, the Roundup remains stubbornly itself.
A longtime local told the Bay Area Telegraph that it’s one of the last places in Lafayette that it’s “bougey.” St Mary’s students love that it’s open until 2am and serves cheap beer.
It is one of the few places in Lafayette where you can still feel the town’s older layers: the ranch town, the horse town, the pre-freeway town, the biker town, the Saint Mary’s hangout, the downtown watering hole, the place where generations of locals have met, laughed, sung badly, watched games, played shuffleboard, and probably stayed out later than they meant to.
My mom’s uncle (my great uncle) was Johnny Combs, of the Combs family of Haines, AK. When their father’s sawmill burned down, they moved here. Johnny owned and operated The Brick House (later Stan’s Brick house and La Virage), then went on to purchase The Roundup. In 1941, another of the brothers, Stephen Reid Combs, married local heiress Margaret Dollar Dickson, a granddaughter of Captain Robert Dollar, founder of the Dollar Steamship Line. The Dollar Ranch in Walnut Creek was later sold to develop Rossmoor Leisure World.