Mobility, Drinking, and Prohibition in the Fargo-Moorhead Border Complex (1870-1940)

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeology of Meat and Ale (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Archaeological investigations of the Saloon Row site in Moorhead, Minnesota, have revealed a high quantity of flask artifacts. While not unusual for a saloon site, this artifact type has received little if any attention in archaeological reports of saloons. Moreover, the presence and variety of these flasks in the context of a border-complex between the cities of Fargo, ND, and Moorhead, MN suggest a longstanding pattern of consumption taking place outside of the saloon. The admittance of North Dakota into the union as a dry-state in 1899 and the enaction of local-prohibition in Moorhead in 1915 illustrate the long and tumultuous relationship both cities had with saloons and their attempts to curb perceived lawlessness and drunkenness. This paper will look at how the general qualities of liquor flasks, namely concealment, and mobility, would have been ideal for the thousands of annual migratory farmhands who navigated a landscape of incremental prohibition.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology of Meat and Ale (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology