The biggest New York Yankees fans in Hood River County aren’t leaving.

They just won’t have the signboard along Highway 35 to cheer, “Go Yanks.”

On June 22, the home of that signboard, Santacroce’s Restaurant, will close, to make way for a new establishment. Santacroce’s is just off Highway 35 between Odell and Mt. Hood.

Richard and Margaret Santacroce, bakers and chefs for the county since 1987, are retiring.

The family-operated restaurant, a Hood River landmark since it opened in 1990, will reopen as Saw Tooth Roadhouse later this summer.

“It’s time,” said Richard, chopping vegetables for minestrone soup one recent morning.

“It’s been a ride. Up and down but the underlying thing has been good.” They’ll remain in the community, just a few miles up the road in the family home.

The new owners are Lori Keller, a former employee of Richard and Margaret Santacroce, and her husband, Doug Caveny, currently of Anchorage. Keller is a 1988 graduate of Hood River Valley High School.

(Caveny expects to open for dinners sometime in July, with lunches added later, as well as breakfast. The menu will include soups, sandwiches, pizza and other fare. The bar and video poker will remain, he said.)

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“It’s been a ride,” reads that readerboard on the Santacroces’ final weekend.

“I’m sure going to miss all the action,” Richard said. He is proud of what Santacroce’s has accomplished in its 18 years.

“We’ve become a place for the entire area, not just the farmers or the loggers, or the bikers. Everybody gets along, and we’re pretty proud of being a place where so many people feel welcome,” he said.

“You can call what we do consistent or boring; depends on how you look at it,” he said. “We got what we do down, and we do it well. We’ve tried to make an impression and pretty well feel we’ve done that.”

Putting down the aprons means something new — time off — for the Santacroces, who have not had a vacation in four years.

“At this level, you do it all,” Richard said.

They put behind them the joys, but also the challenges, of running a restaurant. The key challenge was “getting product” — quality product, Richard said.

“Coming from New York, there were certain cheeses and meats we were used to that we couldn’t get out here. Once established with suppliers, it was fine. Fresh, quality ingredients go into all the food.”

Meanwhile, “costs keep going up and up.” Richard estimates that cheese has gone up 10 cents a pound per week for several months.

“We’ve raised prices some but not enough to offset; we don’t want to price people out.”

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But it’s longevity, not food costs, that led to the Santacroces’ transition; the restaurant has been on the market for two years.

This is a bittersweet time for family members including their daughter, Erika Ammon, who also lives in Mt. Hood.

“Not only do I get to work with my family, but also when I was pregnant, and I could bring my kids to work here.

“Many a day the playpen was right there by the bread oven,” Richard said.

“Or I worked with a kid in the backpack.

“This is our home. Our place,” Erika said. “We come here not only because of the place; We love the food. The feeling is very strange.”

Ammon notes that “people are happy for my parents,” and proudly replays a message on the restaurant answering machine in which a friend gushes, “I am so EXCITED for you!”

Ultimately, the restaurant was about family.

“Margaret is the guidance and the patience behind this operation since day one,” Richard said.

Erika, he said, is “all-around queen,” and their son, Daniel, the “pizza king.” Their son, Joseph, and daughter, Marisa, longtime bar manager, also help out.

Fondly remembered were regulars Ansel and Ed Rencken, “our daily prep time visitors,” who were always welcome to “a snack in the kitchen,” and Tom McKenzie, a local man and former baker who came in and helped pass the time.

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The Santacroce saga started in 1970, when the Santacroces packed up the kids and headed west, without a job. They had seen an Oregonian ad for free house rental in exchange for taking care of a hayfield. That was in Mt. Hood, and they have since purchased the home and still live there.

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They started a bakery from their home in 1987, serving a few restaurants before rapidly expanding and deciding to enact their own dreams of an all-hours pizza place. They searched for a location for a few years before settling on what had been the Elkhorn Inn. (The elkhorn door handle remained in place until renovations in 2001.)

They opened the restaurant in the spring of 1990 and ran it with the integral help of their children and other family members. They scaled back to dinners only a few years back.

Family has been evident in other ways: The County Tyrone Ireland emblem that has long graced the bar, in honor of Margaret’s mother, Susan McBride, a native of that Northern Ireland province.

One tradition the Saw Tooth owners will be hard-pressed to replicate is St. Patrick ’s Day, “the biggest day of the year here,” Richard said.

Erika’s husband, Toby and friends play music, and the main fare is the very un-Italian corned beef and cabbage.

On the other hand, ask Richard his favorite dish of the house:

“The eggplant parmegiano. What’s the secret? It’s been touched by an Irish woman.”

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Fond memories, recent and past, include the New Year’s Eve parties held the first three years after the restaurant opened, complete with Times Square-inspired dropping of a “ball” formed from a bicycle wheel covered with white holiday lights, lowered by a pulley.”

“It was quite a party,” Richard said, and gives a wink to change the subject.

The Santacroces expanded the bar and dining room, and added the patio, in 2001, but the mood and menu have remained essentially the same for 18 years, with a couple of exceptions.

The 80-seat restaurant is adorned with tributes to Richard’s familial home, Sicily, and posters of the opera La Traviata, liqueur La Strega, and the Florence cathedral.

Erika proudly points to a wall where hangs the hand-painted Tuscan plate she carried back on the plane, holding on her lap.

­­­­­­Next to the bar is a serious New York memento: a 9-11 memorial with New York police and fire caps and a clock with a FDNY truck plaque.

“People from all over the country have sent caps to us, including people who have never been in here, but heard about it,” Richard said.

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Perhaps the ultimate Santacroce’s story, however, comes from customers who likely never made it to New York or Italy.

Richard recounts how on hot days the mill workers would came in from the adjacent mill, thirsty for cold beer.

“They drank only Rainier from the cans,” he said. “We set up a tub filled with rock salt, ice, water and cases of Rainier.

“They’d come in and pop them open — instant relief. They’d sit there and get sawdust all over the counter.

“When Margaret changed the carpet, they’d take off their boots before coming in. “That’s how much they respected her.”

Looking back, Richard said “We’ve made lasting friendships, quite a few of them. People who started out customers and became close friends.”

Even the ones who weren’t Yankees fans.