The Heart of the Valley: Two Men, Two Bars and a Town at the Crossroads

MILLHEIM, Pa. — The evening light fades over Penns Valley as a farmer walks into the Millheim Hotel, the scent of cattle still clinging to his clothes. He kisses Matt Cowher, the owner's son, on the cheek in greeting. "I thought I told you to go home and get a shower?" Matt teases, draping an arm over the man's shoulder. Behind the bar, a woman passes homemade sweet potato and peanut butter dog treats to her friend, the night's bartender. They'll see each other again tomorrow morning for coffee.

Through the fogged antique mirror in the entryway, past the unmarked door leading to a dining room of low-top tables, the overhead lights fade to the glow of neon beer signs and wall-mounted televisions broadcasting old western movies. A branded shirt hangs above the bar reading "Slinging drinks since 1794." The bill for a wood-fired pizza and pitcher of beer will read less than $20, and Chris Shriver, the evening bartender who "came with the building," will close out the tab while every person in the room waves goodbye to the departing customer.

This is Millheim, Pennsylvania, population under 1,000, where two establishments face each other across the town's only stoplight. One, the Millheim Hotel, holds one of Centre County's oldest tavern licenses. The other, Elk Creek Cafe, serves craft beers in glasses stamped "rooted in Millheim." Their owners – Buddy Cowher and Tim Bowser – represent two visions of rural Pennsylvania's future, playing out nightly at the intersection of Routes 45 and Main Street.

The Town That Was

The story of Millheim begins at this intersection, where Penn Street becomes North Street, where in 1877 the Millheim Hotel stood as a "capital place with no drunkenness, no bumming or loafing, no rowdyism," according to a letter to The Millheim Journal. The writer penned his observations in both Pennsylvania Dutch and English, speaking to a town that straddled two worlds even then.

A year later, nine men would build a $3,000 road connecting Millheim to the railway station in nearby Coburn. The hotel's stables once harbored Thomas Jordan, a murder suspect fleeing toward a Middleburg jail. Like many visitors, Jordan was meant to be in Millheim for just one night – a single stop on a longer journey.

The town wasn't always a waypoint. Once, it was the center of everything – nestled between two creeks, two valleys, and the entirety of the state. Downtown boasted two department stores, multiple hotels and restaurants, a bank, a newspaper, butchers, and barbers.

It was Pennsylvania in microcosm, until the chain stores came and commerce settled elsewhere. The mills were laid to rest, and Millheim became not the center of something, but rather the halfway point on the road to somewhere else.

By 1977, the Millheim Hotel's owner, Clarence Long, wrestled with whether to keep the establishment open after dark as crime rates soared. Millheim, he said, had become "Dodge City." The reputation lingered so long that into the early 2000s, staff at the nearby Woodward camp were advised to keep their campers away from town.

Yet something remained in the water of Elk Creek, in the soil of the valley, in the spirit of a place that never quite forgot what it was.

The Fighter's Empire

Buddy Cowher's arms are a canvas of tattoos, each image telling a piece of his story: his father's mind in a skull, his children's names, the motorcycle club that led him to charity work. The calloused hands at the end of those tattooed arms speak to decades of manual labor, starting when he dropped out of school in ninth grade.

"I was a badass," he says, remembering those early days. "They told me I'd never amount to shit." Now he owns not just the hotel but a construction business and multiple properties – what he calls, with a hint of pride, his "empire."

Born in 1966 to an Italian mother and Cherokee father, Cowher spent his early years in Woodward, living on a farm in the Penns Valley narrows. He worked for Bud Wagner, the man who would eventually sell him the Millheim Hotel, and learned the rhythms of valley life.

"Back in the days, it was pretty simple. Everybody was laid back. Everybody was just country," he recalls. "Everybody was on the same side of things, and if they weren't, nobody would have known."

By 17, he had his first son, though the boy's mother moved to Australia shortly after the birth. For the next five years, Cowher searched for his child. He married at 18, had another son named Mathew, divorced, and then found Beth – the woman who would help him build his empire – celebrating her 21st birthday at the Millheim Hotel.

In 1996, Cowher started his contracting business, working out of Beth's van. Each morning, Beth would drive him to his work sites, the van loaded with brushes, paint and mud pans. From these humble beginnings, he built a construction empire that would eventually allow him to purchase not just the hotel, but multiple properties throughout Millheim.

The hotel wasn't part of his plan. He was content being on what he calls "this side" of the bar, stopping in after work for a beer. But Wagner kept insisting, seeing in Cowher something the young man might not have seen in himself. The hotel had been serving as a waypoint for hunters, farmers and locals for over two centuries. Its tavern license, among the oldest in the county, was at risk of being sold and transferred to State College's lucrative college market.

"If it wasn't for us stepping in, the place would have been done," Cowher says. What started as a five-year investment became a mission to preserve something he hadn't known he valued until it was almost lost.

The Palace on the Hill

Cowher's commitment to community manifested most visibly in "Buddystock," an annual Fourth of July celebration that became legendary in Penns Valley. It started simply enough – just up the hill from Millheim, in a house with a 38-foot indoor swimming pool that his daughter Alexa had fallen in love with. After long days of construction work, Cowher and his crew would gather by the pool, eating and drinking in the serenity of what he calls his "backwoods palace."

The celebration grew organically, eventually drawing campers from nearby Woodward and locals from throughout the valley. For eight years, Cowher spent $10,000 annually on what became a three-day communion of local faces.

"It was no longer a party for Buddy's friends," he recalls. "It was a party for Penns Valley."

This spirit of giving back took on new meaning when Cowher faced stage three bladder cancer two years ago. "I didn't have no hair, walking around with a cane. It looked like I was 80 years old," he says quietly. The community he'd nurtured responded in kind. "You wouldn't believe the messages and the chains from churches from all over."

The Visionary's Journey

Across the street, Tim Bowser's path to Millheim ran through Berkeley, California, where he spent the 1980s learning about food production before returning east to become Penn State's first director of "small scale agriculture" – though he notes with a wry smile that "'small scale' was a euphemism for 'organic and sustainable.' Literally, they hadn't been coined as terms yet, but you couldn't say organic and you couldn't say alternative."

Born in Erie County, Bowser grew up on a family farm with no intention of pursuing agriculture. At Penn State, he discovered rural sociology and its impact, leading him to Berkeley and back again. His experimental student farm at Penn State sparked more than just crops – it was a chance to implement ideas like rotational grazing, considered "heretical" at the time.

"We had a hell of a good program out there, but we were a little ahead of our time," Bowser recalls, laughing at the IPA in his hands. "Many of them come in here now and pat me on the back like they helped invent sustainable agriculture when they were trying to kill it back then."

When a new dean gutted the program in the 1990s, Bowser moved on to national work with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, focusing on local food systems. But something about Millheim kept drawing him back. On his drives through the valley, he'd stop at the Millheim Hotel, where he discovered a menu he describes as "half country cooking, and half moose-with-a-cookbook."

"There was a pizza, a whole wheat pizza, which was pretty radical, and a pitcher of beer for five bucks," he remembers. "I didn't know a single person there, but I could tell this was different."

Building a New Tradition

By the late 1990s, Bowser decided it was time to stop talking about a local brewpub and start doing it. He saw something in Millheim others missed – a town settled by craftsmen, where every person had to contribute something, be it a trade, an art, or otherwise. In the 1970s, members of the hippie movement had recognized that individuality and flocked to Millheim. Their children and grandchildren remain, still pursuing craftwork, still coloring the town with the auras that first caught Bowser's eye.

The Elk Creek Cafe opened in 2007, the same year as Cowher took over the hotel. The cafe's eastern facade now bears a mural, painted in 2010 by community members in the building's upstairs portion.

While working on it, Bowser encountered Ina Bechtol, a Millheim woman in her 80s, who cackled, "If these walls could talk." She never explained exactly what she meant, but their subsequent friendship and her hints over Sunday brunches led Bowser to believe the building had once served as a brothel.

A Town Between Worlds

Today, both establishments mirror their owners' visions while serving the same community. At the hotel, farmers still come in from the fields, and regulars know exactly what's on the menu and who's behind the bar. Chris Shriver, who came with the building when the Cowhers bought it, still tends bar at night. Beth Cowher has added her touch with a wine shop, converting the old storage area to showcase eighteen local wineries.

At Elk Creek, locally sourced ingredients speak to Bowser's lifelong mission of sustainable agriculture. The menu, designed without dollar signs, features duck from time to time – though not, Bowser hastens to add with a smile, from the famous Millheim ducks that have become an institution in town.

These ducks are perhaps the perfect metaphor for Millheim itself – following newcomers from the municipal parking lot, across Main Street, sometimes right up to the door of the Millheim Hotel. They might be the only visitors Buddy and Beth have ever had to turn away. "It's kind of cute," Bowser says, "to see traffic come to a dead stop in the middle of 45: trucks, everybody, because these ducks are just walking across like 'I didn't give a shit.'"

The ducks aren't the only ones who cross dividing lines. When newcomers question motorcycle groups or stigmatize the hotel's patrons, Buddy Cowher challenges them directly. "Next time we do a benefit ride," he told one critic on Facebook, "I'm coming to your house, and I want you to donate whatever you're going to donate to us." The critic's post disappeared shortly after.

Political divisions run deep, visible in election yard signs and community debates. Yet in Millheim, as Bowser puts it, you're "beautiful if you can shoot straight and pull your weight." It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on – if there's a person in Millheim in need, there's a person in Millheim with aid.

Looking Forward

Today, both men face decisions about their legacies. Cowher has received offers from out-of-town investors, including "two guys from Virginia," but refuses to sell unless the buyer promises to keep the historic liquor license in Millheim. "I would sell only if the license don't get taken out of here," he insists, "otherwise I'll just keep it. It's paid for so I don't need to worry."

The town has weathered change before. Looking at the foundations of the Elk Creek Cafe, you can count three or four layers – each telling a story of fire, rebuilding, and reinvention. The Millheim Hotel's windows have witnessed a hundred years of transformation: the rise and fall of commerce, the shift from grain mills to craft brewing, the slow evolution of a farming community learning to embrace new visions while holding onto its roots.

Now, as rural America grapples with questions of identity and change, Millheim offers a glimpse of how tradition and progress might coexist. Here, at the intersection of Routes 45 and Main Street, two establishments and their owners tell a story of a town that refuses to be just a waypoint – a place where the past and future of rural Pennsylvania meet over a beer, and sometimes, if you're lucky, a few ducks might waddle by to welcome you home.