On this date in 1899, the Wahpeton Globe noted, “The law enforcement league cleaned the gamblers and sure-thing men out of Fargo last week, and the soiled doves took flight, many of them lighting down on Wahpeton and Breckenridge. The wave of reform will soon blow over, and the old familiar faces will be seen in their accustomed places by those looking for them.”
Reports of the City Council shutting down the Wahpeton houses were perennial news. In 1910, the Globe Gazette reported that, under orders from the mayor, Chief of Police Deitz notified proprietors of several houses south of the Northern Pacific tracks to quit business and vacate. The paper stated, “A number of the women left town the next day, and the rest will probably seek more congenial surroundings during the week.” Robbery murders of lone men had been recorded in the district for decades.
The women often went by professional aliases inspired by celebrities, such as Nellie Grant, the newsmaking daughter of U.S. President Grant. Old-timers recalled that the women rode in local parades down Dakota Avenue alongside other local businesses. The public was either shocked or cheering when some women rode on a float in barrels, laughing and waving, possibly unclothed.
In 1952, newspaper editor Donald Lum interviewed Wallace Morden, who opined that Wahpeton no longer had characters like the great lawmen of earlier decades. Morden recalled when he, then a policeman, arrested a professional man at a brothel, and it took “four men and a dray wagon” to get him to jail. Wallace added that “present day policemen have it easy, for few professional men go on such monumental drunks and even the town drunks are chastened to make them easily handled.”
In 1961, Lum wrote, “Just for the record, Wahpeton reached its toughest, roughest period in the 1930s, although this city had open brothels as late as 1916. At the height of the bootleg era, Wahpeton and Breckenridge were a couple of bouncing, bad towns, one supporting slot machines and the other a sort of headquarters for liquor rings. Probably, in about fifty years, some magazine will place a halo of legend about some of the characters we had here then. But this writer can say, from experience, there was nothing good about it — nothing whatever.”
A county official once told Lum, “We frown on homicide, at least.”
Dakota Datebook by Lise Erdrich
Sources:
- The Richland County Gazette, July 1, 1887
- The City Election. The Wahpeton Times, March 6, 1890
- North Dakota Globe, March 26, 1891
- Highway Robbery. Richland County Gazette, October 21, 1892
- MURDER. BODY OF AN UNKNOWN YOUNG MAN FOUND. In a Vacant Lot in the City
- Limits – Evidently Struck Down With a Coupling Pin in the Hands of a Thug Companion and
- Robbed – No Clue to the Identity of the Victim or His Assailants – Every Pocket Rifled and
- Shoes Taken Off The Feet of the Dead Man. North Dakota Globe, November 18, 1897
- CITY COUNCIL. The Wahpeton Times, Thursday, July 6, 1905
- REPORT TO THE CITY COUNCIL. The Wahpeton Globe, Thursday, August 10, 1905
- Wahpeton Globe, Thursday, August 17, 1905
- Resorts Closed Up. -- The Globe Gazette, Thursday, July 21, 1910
- FULL BLAST HERE.RAID MADE MONDAY NIGHT. Reveals a Condition of Things Not
- Supposed to Exist Outside of Large Cities. The Globe Gazette, Thursday, July 17, 1913
- CITY COUNCIL PROCEEDINGS. Globe Gazette, June 8, 1916
- Donald Lum, editor and Skyrider columnist, Richland County Famer Globe, January 25, 1952
- “Do You Remember” Quiz Presented. Richland County Farmer Globe, Tuesday, August 11, 1953
- Donald Lum, editor and Skyrider columnist, Richland County Farmer Globe, May 4, 1961
