Prohibition, 19th century style
So if you have ancestors who trekked over the Oregon Trail, you know what kind of people they must have been.
If your folks walked that wagon road, you know they traveled a path stretching 2170 miles from Missouri to Oregon’s Willamette Valley — a wagon road in name only, and really little more than a pair of parallel ruts.
If your great grandparents or great great grandparents took that trip, you know they traversed across endless prairie, sagebrush desert, and mountains on a trip that averaged 120 days, covering 15 miles day, from sunrise to sundown.1
If your family members were among the 200,000 to 300,000 who set out … and not among the 20,000 to 30,000 who died along the way … well, you know what they were made of.2
If these are your people, you know these were hearty folk indeed.
You know they were tough.
These, after all, are the people who, in the words of the Oregon Legislature:
endured hardships and privations, together with great sacrifices, in effecting a settlement in Oregon; they not only left the places of their birth, their native homes, and graves of their ancestors, for thousands of miles behind, but they launched their property, their own lives and the lives of their helpless families on the great plains, surrounded by the howling savages, and pilgrim-like, pursued their journey to the shores of the great Pacific…3
A hard-working, hard-fighting, hard-drinking bunch of pioneers, right?
Well… maybe not that last part.
The hard-drinking part.
Because, on the 24th of June 1844, Oregon went dry.
Totally.
The statute that became law that day provided:
That if any person shall hereafter import or introduce any ardent spirits into Oregon, with intent to sell, barter, or trade the same and shall offer the same for sale, trade or barter, he shall be fined the sum of fifty dollars for each and every such offense, which may be recovered by indictment or by trial before a justice of the peace, without the form of pleading.4
Actually selling booze in Oregon carried a fine of $20 for each sale,5 and distilling liquor would cost you $100 — not to mention the fact that the sheriff was to be ordered “to seize and destroy the distilling apparatus.”6
The only out under the law was for medicinal use: “this act shall not be so construed as to prevent any practicing physician from selling such liquors for medicine,” though there was a limit — “not to exceed one gallon at one time.”7
Bummer.
Somehow the “Wild Wild West” and “bone dry” just don’t seem to go together.
But never fear for your 2,000-mile-walking relatives.
Those two didn’t go together, at least not for long.
That law stayed on the books for only five years. It was repealed in 1849.8
Whew…
I’ll bet those tired, dusty, thirsty folks who’d just walked 2,000 miles were happy about that…
“Bartender, give me a –”
“Water or lemonade, son?”
Well, at least genealogists might like this… after all, it might have created records…
SOURCES
- “The Oregon Trail,” U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, History and Educational Resources (https://www.blm.gov/learn/ : accessed 17 Apr 2017). ↩
- The Oregon Trail: An Education Resource, 2016 Edition, PDF at 10-12, National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, Bureau of Land Management (https://www.blm.gov/ : accessed 17 Apr 2017). ↩
- Join Resolution, 9 Jan 1851, in Statutes of a Local Nature and Joint Resolutions … of the Territory of Oregon … 1850 (Oregon City: Asahel Bush, Territorial Printer, 1851), 59; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 17 Apr 2017). ↩
- §1, “An Act To prevent the introduction, sale and distillation of Ardent Spirits in Oregon,” in Laws of a General and Local Nature … from the Year 1843, … to … the Year 1849 (Salem, Oregon : Asahel Bush, Territorial Printer, 1853), 94-95; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 17 Apr 2017). ↩
- §2, at 95. ↩
- Ibid., §3. ↩
- Ibid., §6. ↩
- “Prohibition in Oregon,” Highlights of the Oregon State Archives, Secretary of State (http://sos.oregon.gov/archives/ : accessed 17 Apr 2017. ↩
History is so often more complex than it first seems. Many people assume that the Pacific was an outpost of the west, and settled last by people crossing the plains and mountains. But the first white settlers to the Pacific Northwest came by boat,around the horn, and settled along the coast, in the Puget lowlands, and up the Columbia and the Willamette rivers as far as boat travel could take them. These were largely folks who had commerce on their minds, founded cities, and established trade in the commodities found in the NW. They lobbied to be the western terminals for train tracks then being built. Those who followed the Oregon trail came after, and many simply stopped along the way and settled in(some of my folks did that). Some were motivated by land, some by gold, some by religion (Mormons), and some because they just did not fit into civilized places. Pretty much the same story as the rest of the country. But it is important, I think to recognize that the Oregon territory was first settled along the coast and waterways. Many later folks went further north, and took boats down the Columbia and spread out into the valleys from there. And that little bit about “howling savages”? That attitude has only in recent decades changed in any meaningful way. Ditto the legal status of black people, who were not allowed to settle in Oregon. A man named George Bush and his group were escorted from the Willamette Valley to the Columbia River ferry and put aboard. There were good people in the territory across the river who welcomed them and showed them to a good prairie (the word meant meadowlands) where they could settle and make farms, just east of Fort Vancouver. It is still known as Bush Prairie.
I was born and grew up in Oregon, and I love it there passionately. It is a magnificent place, and there are fine people there. But it took a good while and some hard honesty about the history of white settlement before it became a place I am proud to be from.