Clay County Histories

Markus Krueger | Program Director HCSCC

I’ve been studying the fascinating history of our local alcohol prohibition for a decade now. From 1890 to 1937, local booze laws changed a lot on either side of the Red River, and it affected our history in very interesting ways. Some ways were hidden in darkness while others were lit up in neon. Now that recreational marijuana is legal in Minnesota (and still illegal in North Dakota), I see some interesting parallels with how alcohol prohibition was repealed in 1933.
Here’s one: Have you noticed that nobody is trying to sell you “weed” or “pot” or “marijuana?” Nope, it’s all cannabis, CBD, THC, and Delta 9. Why is this? Because for over a century, our government has spent uncountable sums of money to make Americans associate those words with crime and danger. The task set before businesses that sell things that were recently illegal is to rebrand their product in order to change people’s associations with it.
For now, at least, people who sell this plant and its derivatives want their products to sound not just normal but boring, clinical, and not at all frightening. They refer to the plant by its scientific Latin name: “cannabis,” or by acronyms related to chemical compounds only scientists can pronounce: Delta-9-TetraHydroCannabinol (THC). Once we all get used to the idea of legal cannabis, then maybe they’ll hire the Swedish Bikini Team to sell “the Devil’s Lettice,” but I think that’ll be a while yet.
And this same thing happened when we re-legalized alcohol in 1933. Before prohibition, drinking establishments around here were called “Saloons,” and a “bar” was just a piece of furniture that the bartender stood behind. Starting in the mid-1800s, the anti-alcohol Temperence Movement grew in strength to become the most powerful special interest group in American history. They amended the Constitution FOUR times. The reason you pay income tax today is because Temperance folks wanted to wean the government off its dependence on alcohol taxes for revenue.
Temperance advocates successfully made “Saloon” a dirty word. Thanks to their advocacy, American voters associated saloons with drunkenness, lust, sin, violence, crime, and unpleasant odors. To be fair, saloons were all that and more! But in 1933, after 13 years of federal prohibition, Americans decided they wanted their booze back. That did not mean, however, that we wanted to go back to the bad old days. Alcohol peddlers had to convince a skeptical public that Americans could consume their product responsibly this time.
Before Prohibition, Amund Thoreson bartended at the Three Orphans Saloon in Moorhead. He kept selling booze all through Prohibition. When alcohol became legal again, he closed his speakeasy and reopened as the Silver Moon Café (Mezzaluna in Fargo is Italian for Silver Moon, named as a nod to this restaurant). Other classic early Moorhead bars were named the Blackhawk Cafe, Diemert’s Cafe, The Rex Cafe, The Old Trail Tavern, The Tile Tavern, The Skol Room, The Magic Aquarium Bar, The Las Vegas Lounge. The “saloon” was dead. We drink in “bars” now.
I’ll be making more such comparisons in our History On Tap presentation series at Junkyard Brewing Company. “Comparing Prohibitions: Alcohol & Marijuana” will be the topic on December 4, February 5, and March 4 at 6pm.