Last Call at the Top of Main: How Utah’s First Brewpub Changed Park City and Utah Beer

Walk to the very top of Park City’s Main Street and you’ll find a building with a grain silo built into its brewhouse ceiling. For 37 years, it was where Utah’s craft beer story really began.

The pub that called it home, known for most of its life as the Wasatch Brew Pub, served its last pints in spring 2026. Its story is worth telling, because without it, Utah’s beer scene might look very different.

A Milwaukee guy in a thirsty state

Greg Schirf came to Utah from Milwaukee, a city built on beer, and found a state with very little of the good stuff. So in 1986 he started his own. Wasatch Brewery became, by most accounts, Utah’s first modern brewery and its first since Prohibition.

Brewing beer was one thing. Serving it where you brewed it was another. At the time, Utah law didn’t allow breweries to sell beer on site. Schirf found a sponsor in state Representative Mike Dmitrich of Price, and in 1988 the Legislature passed a bill allowing it. The brewpub became legal in Utah.

A deal at the top of Main

Park City, still working to revive its historic Main Street, saw an opportunity. City manager Arlene Loble offered Schirf city land at the top of Main at half its appraised value, on one condition: build a brewpub there. He did. The Wasatch Brew Pub opened in 1989, about a month before the first Squatters opened in Salt Lake City.

“Why have just one?”

Wasatch built a reputation for beers with a wink. The most famous was Polygamy Porter, and in 2001 its billboard, which asked “Why Have Just One?”, was turned down by two outdoor advertising companies. The brewery’s other taglines, like “take some home for the wives,” were just as cheeky. Earlier, its St. Provo Girl Pilsner had invited drinkers to baptize their taste buds. Not everyone laughed, but plenty of people remembered the name.

Mergers, buyouts and a new name

In the early 2000s, Wasatch and Squatters joined forces as the Utah Brewers Cooperative. In 2012 the company was sold to Fireman Capital Partners, the start of what became CANarchy. Then in 2022, Monster Beverage bought CANarchy’s beer brands, including Wasatch, but left the restaurants out of the deal. Squatters founders Peter Cole and Jeff Polychronis bought the brewpubs back, bringing the Park City pub under local ownership again.

Because Monster now owned the Wasatch name, the pub was renamed Top of Main Brew Pub in November 2023, with a lineup that included the Original Schirf Beer, a Munich-style helles honoring its founder.

Everything runs its course

Top of Main closed for the spring 2026 shoulder season and did not reopen. Schirf, who sold his stake in the business years ago but kept the building, put the building under contract, KPCW reported. “It was fun, but everything runs its course,” he told the station. He also credited the pub’s longtime Latino staff, who made up much of the team, with keeping the business going all those years.

What it left behind

• A law that made Utah brewpubs possible. Every taproom in the state owes something to that 1988 bill.
• A revived Main Street anchor. The pub helped bring life back to the top of Park City’s historic district.
• A sense of humor about Utah. Polygamy Porter is still one of the most talked-about beer names in the state.
• A craft beer scene. Today Utah has dozens of breweries. The first one started with a guy from Milwaukee who wanted a good beer.

Explore more Park City and Summit County stories and people and history from across Utah.

This story draws on reporting from KPCW, TownLift, Brewbound, Gastronomic SLC and ABC News. Photos are illustrative. Top photo: Don Ramey Logan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.