Klatik’s Log Cabin Nite Club – North Ridgeville

I’ve had a thing for log cabins for a long time.

Maybe it’s because we had a set of Lincoln Logs to play with when I was a kid (although I never mastered roof construction). And Mom always bought Log Cabin Syrup. Or possibly because my family used to camp at Tamsin Park in Peninsula, Ohio, and there was a cool log cabin Ranger Station there.

Even as an adult, I’ve enjoyed restaurants like the Cabin Club in Westlake, and stayed in plenty of modern cabins while camping at Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park™ Camp - Resorts all over the Midwest and Canada. I’ve even half-heartedly checked out cabins that you can buy already assembled and have trucked to a lot of your choice to live in.

Which leads me to last week, when I was poking around on Ebay and saw the ashtray above advertising Klatik’s Log Cabin Nite Club. As it says, it was located at the corner of Sugar Ridge and Route 76 (now Ohio State Route 83) in North Ridgeville, Ohio.

Since I’d never heard of it, I wondered if it was really a log cabin – and if it was still there.

A brief internet search showed that Emil Klatik had a liquor license for a business known as Sugar Ridge Log Cabin. I found a mention of the Ridgeville Sportsmen’s Club having its regular meeting there in January 1956.

And a little more Googling revealed that local historian and researcher Dennis Thompson had already done my research for me! Thanks, Dennis!

As you might remember, Dennis is the King of Vintage Aerials, having researched, identified and labeled thousands of vintage aerial photos in Ohio and around the country – including the Sugar Ridge Log Cabin (shown below). That’s Sugar Ridge Road in front of the building.

Circa 1963

Dennis’ caption noted, "The northwest corner of Rt 83 and Sugar Ridge Rd, North Ridgeville. This was the Sugar Ridge Log Cabin restaurant and lounge. Advertised disco nights in the 1970s! It seems to have existed until 1980 or so and was replaced with a different building. Just an empty lot today.”

Here’s a Vintage Aerial side view photo from 1969. That’s Route 83 at the bottom of the photo.

Circa 1969

(Here's the link to the 1963 entry on the Vintage Aerial website, and this link will take you to the 1969 photo.)

A popular restaurant called Black Dog Pub and Eatery later called that location home for a few years before a fire damaged the building in 2013.

Courtesy Fox8

Anyway, like Dennis said, there is just an empty lot at the location today.

But if you ‘drive by’ on Google Maps going north on 83, for a few yards you briefly see a ‘ghost' image of a building there.