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The name of the town of Elko is in the mouths of many this week, thanks to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering that began on Monday and will run through next Saturday, an event that will include the participation of bertsolaris form the US and the Basque Country.  We will talk more about this tomorrow, but today we wanted to profile someone from Gernika that lives in Elko. This is an article that was published by the Elko Daily Free Press newspaper written by Toni R. Milano. 

Toni. R. Milano. Owner of Biltoki Basque restaurant for 30 years, Ramon Zugazaga has been a fixture of the Elko community as a caterer and soccer coach. His devotion to helping others through his cooking and fundraising has kept him busy since arriving in Elko more than 50 years ago.

Ramon Zugazaga was born in 1946 in Guernica, Vizcaya Spain. Growing up, Ramon worked in his family’s restaurant and at the age of 18 immigrated to the United States, also working at the Holland Ranch, then owned by Jess and Elias Goicoechea.

At the ranch, Ramon worked as a sheepherder, camp tender, and cook under a three-year contract, eventually staying for five years. He returned to Spain for a few months before coming back to the area.

Ramon moved to Boise and was a chef at the Boardinghouse restaurant before moving to Gooding, Idaho and opening the first Biltoki. Missing Elko, he returned and opened Biltoki at the corner of Fourth and Silver streets in 1983. Two years later, he married Jane Last and they had two children, Kepa and Belen.

Ramon’s love for soccer led him to coach for the Elko Indar Futbol Club starting around 1991. The team plays around the state, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah and has traveled to San Sebastian, Spain three times to play for the Donosti Cup.

Active in the Basque community, Ramon has served as president of the Basque Club for 10 years, helping with projects around the clubhouse, cooking and planning games for the National Basque Festival, and making sure the Basque heritage is passed down to the younger generations.

Apart from the restaurant, Ramon has catered for various events, hosted cooking demonstrations for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and led fundraisers for the SnoBowl. In his spare time, Ramon enjoys hunting and traveled last fall to South Dakota to hunt birds, pheasants and Buffalo.

Zugazaga closed Biltoki in 2013. Today, he hosts a lunch once a month at the Basque Clubhouse for the community and continues to coach girls soccer, planning another trip to Spain next year with the Indar girls team.

“I enjoy helping people,” he said recently. “Doesn’t matter who it is.”

“I want to leave the world better than I found it.”

 (Article by Toni R, Milano in the Elko Daily Free Press: ELKO 100: Ramon Zugazaga)