“On the Road to Moorhead”: Contextualizing the Infrastructure of Transient Workers and Moorhead Saloons along the Minnesota and North Dakota Border

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Following the Civil War, the Midwest experienced unprecedented population growth. Keeping pace with the expansion of numerous commodity frontiers driven by the building of railways, cities such as Fargo, ND, and Moorhead, MN, became seasonal locales for thousands of transient workers seeking employment. While these workers were employed in a variety of industries, many came to the region in hopes of working in the wheat fields either on small farms or the industrial “bonanza farms.” Simultaneously, saloons expanded greatly in Moorhead, taking advantage of the influx of seasonal laborers and statewide prohibition in North Dakota. Archaeological investigations at the Saloon Row site in Moorhead revealed an incredibly rich material culture, emblematic of various drinking behaviors occurring in and around the North Bridge, one of the few bridges that once connected Fargo and Moorhead. Considered as part of a wider system of transportation networks and businesses, the Saloon Row site sits at the center of overlapping infrastructure. Combining the insights gained from analyzing liquor flasks as well as historical documentation, this paper seeks to highlight the experiences of transient workers as they transgressed an increasingly complex and often violent environment during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37228.0