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Moorhead’s Saloon Era, 1890–1915

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Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County
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Photograph of the interior of Fred Ambs’s saloon, ca. 1890s.

Interior of Fred Ambs’s saloon in Moorhead, ca. 1890s. From the Moody Family Collection, Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.

For twenty-five years, between 1890 and 1915, Moorhead, Minnesota, was infamous for being a rough and rowdy saloon town. The reputation was well deserved, as alcohol sales were the city’s number one industry

Since the arrival of the first settler-colonists in the Red River Valley in the 1870s, there had been a moral, political, and economic fight in Moorhead between the “Drys,” who wanted alcohol restricted or banned, and the “Wets,” who advocated for alcohol. Their argument echoed a concurrent national debate over the proper place of alcohol in American social life.

In 1890, the Drys scored a major victory when North Dakota outlawed alcohol sales. Thirsty North Dakotans simply went across the Red River to Minnesota border towns, where alcohol was still legal. “Let the saloons come,” said Moorhead mayor and brewer John Erickson in 1888. “The more the better it will be for us. They pay more in taxes than anyone else. How many temperance people…pay $500 a year in taxes?”

By 1900, Moorhead, had forty-seven saloons and a brewery to serve its population of 3,732 people. One in ten Moorhead families gained its income from the alcohol industry, and saloons were clustered along the two bridges over the river. While most of them were simple places with wooden bars and spittoons on the floor, the North Bridge district became famous for its over-the-top “beer palaces.” John Haas’s Midway boasted 400 electric lights. The Rathskeller over the Rhine had polka bands on an arcaded porch and an international reading room downstairs. The Three Orphans’ Saloon boasted that its forty-eight-foot bar was the longest in the country. A few saloons had their own “jag wagons,” horse-drawn taxis that transported people from Fargo to Moorhead.

Many of the saloons were “tied houses”—bars owned by a brewery that served only that brewery’s beer. Duluth Brewing and Malting Company’s saloon was the Rex Hotel. There were enough saloons owned by the Theodore Hamm Brewing Company of St. Paul that part of the South Bridge saloon district was known as Hamm’s Row. With a few exceptions (notably, Anheuser-Busch from St. Louis), most beers sold in Moorhead were made by the regional beer giants of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Saloon owners bought whiskey in bulk and rebottled it under their own labels, such as Pederson Mercantile’s Black Buffalo Rye and Detroit Lake Rye, Jacob Keifer’s Metropolitan, and W. H. Diemert’s 31.

While selling alcohol was illegal within North Dakota, North Dakotans could legally purchase alcohol by mail order from Minnesota. Moorhead quickly became one of the largest alcohol distribution centers for North Dakotans, including many who were operating illegal saloons called “Blind Pigs.” Moorhead businesses such as W. H. Diemert & Co. and Pederson Mercantile were primarily liquor wholesalers who shipped much of their product to Dry North Dakota.

There was a downside to Moorhead’s saloon industry. According to Moorhead Police records, nearly 75 percent of the arrests in the early 1900s were alcohol related. Arrests spiked during harvest season as thousands of farm hands descended upon the city to spend their paychecks; while in town, they sometimes also fought and were mugged by local gangs. Like crime, political corruption was widespread in 1890s Moorhead. Local business and political leader Solomon Comstock observed, “There were always many Moorhead citizens who were against the liquor traffic, but on the other hand if they took the forty-seven saloons out of Moorhead, what was left? Why[,] liquor was the principal business of Moorhead…Moorhead’s greatest problem was whether to be pure or prosperous.”

By 1914, all of Clay County had voted to ban alcohol sales under local option laws except the cities of Moorhead and Barnesville. In 1915, Minnesota State Senator F. H. Peterson of Moorhead introduced “county option” legislation that allowed the whole county to vote on the alcohol issue. On May 17, 1915, the voters of Clay County voted to outlaw alcohol. Moorhead saloons closed with much pomp and fireworks on June 30, 1915, twenty-five years to the day after Fargo’s saloons closed in 1890. Many Moorhead bartenders and saloon owners continued to sell alcohol illegally during Prohibition, and reopened the city’s first legal bars as soon as Prohibition was repealed.

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© Minnesota Historical Society
  • Bibliography
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Jensen, Tyler. “Wet and Dry: The Story of Moorhead and Alcohol.” Doing it Downtown, March 4, 2016.
https://doingitdt.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/wet-and-dry-the-story-of-moorhead-and-alcohol/

Moorhead Police Department records, October 1903. Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, Moorhead.

Oral history interview with Markus Krueger, July 14, 2017
Oral History Collection, Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, Moorhead
Description: Krueger discusses the Moorhead saloon district’s impact on the local economy and how Moorhead went from Wet to Dry.

Peihl, Mark. “Alcohol Issue in Clay County, 1872–1937.” Pamphlet, February 2016: "Wet or Dry Booze, 1880–1933." Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, Moorhead.

Red River Star, April 17, 1875.
Shoptaugh, Terry L. Moorhead. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.

“Today’s Doings: The News of the City in Brief.” Moorhead Daily News, July 8, 1898.

Related Images

Photograph of the interior of Fred Ambs’s saloon, ca. 1890s.
Photograph of the interior of Fred Ambs’s saloon, ca. 1890s.
Photograph of the exterior of Fred Ambs's saloon, ca. 1890s.
Photograph of the exterior of Fred Ambs's saloon, ca. 1890s.
Photograph of A. J. Rustad's saloon, ca. 1890s.
Photograph of A. J. Rustad's saloon, ca. 1890s.
View (photograph) of Main Avenue from Fourth Street in Moorhead, ca. 1890s
View (photograph) of Main Avenue from Fourth Street in Moorhead, ca. 1890s
Photograph of North Bridge saloons on First Street in Moorhead, ca. 1890s.
Photograph of North Bridge saloons on First Street in Moorhead, ca. 1890s.
Photograph of John Haas’s Midway saloon, Moorhead, ca. 1890s.
Photograph of John Haas’s Midway saloon, Moorhead, ca. 1890s.

Turning Point

In 1890, when North Dakota becomes a “Dry” state, North Dakotans start to take their business across the border to Minnesota.

Chronology

1883

The “local option” allows Minnesota citizens to vote on whether saloons should be allowed in their towns. Moorhead residents vote to continue to allow saloons.

1890

North Dakota saloons close on June 30.

1898

Moorhead has forty-three saloons and a population of 3,700.

1915

On February 15, the Minnesota Legislature passes a county Option Law that allows residents of an entire county say over liquor sales.

1915

Moorhead becomes a Dry city on June 30.