12/20/2011:
Five hundred quarts of nine-year-old whiskey were carried from the jailhouse to the Stutsman County Courthouse on this date in 1922. Sheriff Dana Wright had seized the liquor from smugglers in 1921, during the first year of Prohibition, and the whiskey had been stored in the jail as evidence. At the orders of the court, Sheriff Wright smashed every whiskey bottle at the courthouse window, in full view of an audience gathered on the grounds below. This spectacle warned rum-runners that any liquor smuggled through North Dakota would not make it out.
The long unguarded border between North Dakota and Canada, with its flat land and numerous road crossings, was an ideal location for smugglers to connect Canadian liquor warehouses to speakeasies in the United States. A quart of whiskey could be bought for $3.50 in Canada and sold for $20 in the States. Rum-runners loaded bottles of liquor into sacks to save space, and crammed them into the biggest cars they could find. A decoy car usually led the way, sniffing out hidden roadblocks. Drivers were hired with a promise of a thousand dollars, almost a year's salary, as payment for three trips across the border. Unfortunately, most drivers were caught before the third run.
Jail was often the second stop for captured whiskey runners, after a visit to the hospital to fix bullet wounds and broken bones. The rum-running business was incredibly dangerous for both drivers and police. A routine traffic stop in Minot turned into a shoot-out at point-blank range between a police officer and a smuggler. A Sioux Falls driver, whose wife thought he was a travelling auto-parts salesman, died in a shootout with Bottineau County sheriffs. As the smugglers increased their firepower to defend their whiskey cargo, the sheriffs upgraded to Thompson and Browning machine guns. Women drivers were even used, in hopes of discouraging the police from returning fire. Even if the smugglers made it through without a shoot-out, their high-speed escape down rough dirt roads often ended in a crash.
Mortal risk and a tightening of Canadian laws slowed the stream of cars carrying liquor into North Dakota, but the smuggling still continued until the end of Prohibition in 1933.
As for Dana Wright, the Stutsman County Sheriff, he changed jobs when his term ran out in 1927, but he didn’t leave the fight. With Prohibition still in effect, he headed north, becoming a customs agent at St. John in Rolette County, watching for those rum-runners sneaking across the border.
Dakota Datebook written by Derek Dahlsad.
Sources:
"500 Quarts of Booze Gone," Bismarck Tribune 12/20/1922
"American Cultural History - Decade 1920 – 1929," Kingwood Library, retrieved 11/25/11 http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade20.html
"Machine Guns Used To Halt Liquor Autos," Bismarck Tribune 11/2/1920
"Rum Runners Race to Beat 'Chief' Winter," The Morning Republican (Mitchell, SD) 11-18-1920
"Identity of Slain 'Runner' Is Discovered," Bismarck Tribune 10-18-1920
"Minot Whiskey Battle May Be Fatal For Two," Bismarck Tribune, 1/20/1921
"Dana Monroe Wright Papers: Biographical Sketch," North Dakota Historical Society, retrieved 11/28/11 http://history.nd.gov/archives/manuscripts/inventory/10046.html