"First and foremost, Gunpowder Grille is NOT moving and will remain at our current location."
Marissa Ralston, co-owner of the restaurant at 237 E. Market Street, said that on the record to a local news outlet this June. Not because a reporter asked. Because enough people in Clearfield already believed the opposite that it was hurting her business.
That's the part worth sitting with before we get to the historic jail, the speakeasy behind the secret door, or the fall festival calendar. In a downtown small enough to walk end to end in ten minutes, a rumor about one business can knock the wind out of a completely unrelated one. If you live here, you've probably heard some version of this year's dining news secondhand, at the grocery store, on a neighborhood Facebook group, from someone who "heard" something. Here's what's actually documented, and why the confusion happened in the first place.
The Rumor That Wasn't True
Gunpowder Grille opened its doors in February 2026, a partnership between two Clearfield families: Dan and Stephanie Kline and Andrew Reed, who own Bob's Army and Navy, and Bernie and Marissa Ralston, who run Big Mamma's Sauces. The restaurant took over the old Ethan's Café building on Market Street and built its menu around the Ralstons' wing sauces and locally sourced meats, with beef from Goss Run Farms in Houtzdale and cold cuts from the Country Butcher.
By June, word was spreading that Gunpowder Grille was closing or relocating. It wasn't. Ralston had to clarify publicly that the restaurant "operates as its own independent business" and that whatever was happening elsewhere didn't touch its day to day operations. The rumor was specific enough, and persistent enough, that it became its own local news story.
Why The Building Next Door Explains The Confusion
The rumor didn't come from nowhere. Bob's Army and Navy, the Klines and Reeds' original business, had expanded a few years back into a clothing outlet at the Clearfield Square mall, on a lease Dan Kline has described as a three-year arrangement. His stated long-term plan is to eventually bring that outlet back downtown and connect it with the original Bob's storefront and the restaurant next door into one connected footprint.
That's a real plan, discussed on the record, well before this summer's rumor cycle. But "Bob's wants to consolidate downtown eventually" is an easy sentence to lose in translation. By the time it worked its way through enough conversations, it had turned into "Bob's is moving," which turned into "the restaurant is moving too," which turned into people telling each other Gunpowder Grille was done. Three businesses, two founding families, and one shared building complex were enough to turn a mall lease detail into a restaurant closing rumor. That's not a story about bad information. It's a story about how a compact downtown telegraphs every change, real or imagined, at high volume.
The Jail Took Three Years For A Reason
While that was playing out on Market Street, a much bigger and slower project was finishing two blocks away. The building at 300 N 2nd Street served as the Clearfield County Jail from 1872 until 1979. Brothers Dr. Jeffrey Rice and Dr. Jeremy Rice bought it and spent roughly two and a half years turning it into The Rock on the River, a restaurant, distillery, speakeasy, and event venue that had its grand opening weekend in May 2026.
The renovation took that long partly because the Rices insisted on matching the original materials. The jail's pale sandstone was originally quarried in Grampian, Pennsylvania, and the new two-story addition built onto the historic structure used stone from that same quarry so the old and new sections would read as one building instead of a patch job. Operations manager Ashley Bell, who grew up in Clearfield watching the building sit dark and gray, said cleaning the stone revealed a lighter, older color nobody in town had seen in decades.
What's actually inside now:
- The Warden Restaurant, a fine dining space on the second floor of the new addition, added specifically because the historic building couldn't be brought up to modern code for full food service.
- A basement speakeasy, hidden behind a door that opens using an antique wall telephone as the handle, serving a more casual menu of drinks and appetizers.
- Doing Time Distillery, the venue's in-house spirits brand, distilling its own whiskey on site.
- Ten former solitary confinement cells, which the Rices plan to convert into overnight Airbnb rooms, letting guests spend a night in the old jail on purpose.
Where Gunpowder Grille went from announcement to open doors in a matter of months, the jail took years, because turning a nineteenth century prison into a licensed restaurant and distillery is a fundamentally different kind of project than opening a restaurant in an existing café space. If you've driven past 2nd Street wondering why the "coming soon" status dragged on so long, that's the actual answer: sourcing period-correct stone and clearing modern building code for a structure built in 1872 isn't something that moves fast, no matter how much the town wants it to.
What's Open Right Now
Here's where both places actually stand as of late August 2026:
| Business | Address | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Gunpowder Grille | 237 E. Market St. | Open Tuesday (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.) and Thursday through Saturday (11 a.m. to 7 p.m.); closed Monday and Wednesday |
| The Rock on the River | 300 N. 2nd St. | Open, with the Warden Restaurant and speakeasy operating and additional events already booked into the fall and winter |
Gunpowder Grille has settled into a limited but consistent schedule, and its reputation has held up despite the rumor scare. It currently sits at 4.7 out of 5 on Tripadvisor, ranked third of 37 restaurants in Clearfield. The Rock on the River, for its part, isn't just running dinner service. The venue is already booking a Harvest Vendor Fair this fall, with vendor registration open through email, and has a Christmas Market scheduled for December 15, both signs the Rices are building the venue into a recurring event calendar rather than a one-time renovation reveal.
The Fall Calendar Adds Another Layer
Neither of these stories is happening in isolation from the rest of the county's fall season. Mint Condition's annual fall festival returns to Grampian Park on Saturday, September 26, with food, local vendors, kids' entertainment, and a soup cook-off. In Glen Richey, a separate fall celebration is set for Saturday, September 12, with hay rides, live music, and seasonal treats. Both events pull from the same pool of local vendors and residents who'll also be deciding whether to try the Warden Restaurant or grab wings at Gunpowder Grille that same weekend. Downtown Clearfield's dining scene isn't expanding in a vacuum. It's expanding alongside a fall calendar that's already busy.
What This Actually Tells You
None of this changes anyone's mortgage payment. But if you live in Clearfield, or you're paying attention to it from a distance, the lesson here is more useful than either restaurant story on its own. A downtown this size runs on shared buildings, shared families, and overlapping business plans, which means rumors move faster than facts and facts take longer to arrive than anyone wants. The businesses that survive that cycle, like Gunpowder Grille pushing back publicly and by name, or the Rices spending three years getting the stonework right instead of cutting corners, are the ones actually worth watching. That's a better read on a neighborhood's direction than any single headline.
If you're keeping an eye on what's changing in Clearfield, whether you already live here or you're weighing whether this is the kind of downtown you want to be part of, Nelson Realty tracks this kind of local detail because it's part of understanding the place, not just the listings in it. Search Listings, or get a free home valuation, whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
