The photograph above right is from A Century Together, 1975. It locates the Red Light "sample room" on First Avenue and Fifth Street. It is likely from the 1880's.

On November 2, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison approved the admission of North Dakota to the United States. In that same year, a state Constitutional prohibition of alcoholic beverages was enacted. For the next 43 years alcoholic beverages were illegal in North Dakota. But not the vicinity. Fargo saloon owners quickly moved across the river to Moorhead where the sale of liquor flourished for 30 years until national prohibition took effect in 1920.

In November 1932, a North Dakota state referendum abolished state prohibition laws—demonstrating the strength of nationwide repeal sentiment that culminated in the passage and ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the US Constitution in 1933.

Over the last 70 years, Fargo has had a number of famous and infamous saloons, bars, taverns, ... whatever you wish to call establishments where liquor is a primary source of revenue. I speak not of restaurants, clubs, lodges, sporting events, or similar establishments or events where liquor is served. I mean to cast no dispersions; I am just trying to define the genre.

Despite the Twenty-first Amendment, saloons did not pop up all over Fargo. The 1943 telephone book, for example, lists just ten places with on-sale liquor: the Bismarck, Brady's, the Empire, Gene's, the Grand Bar, the Nestor, the Silver Tray, the Smoke Shop, Todd's, and the Waldorf. [The 2001/2002 telephone book lists 39].

Of the earliest saloons, two remain: the Empire and the Bismarck. Both cater to an older clientele. One of the more recent saloons, Old Broadway, caters to a younger clientele.

One of the most well-known (but now gone) was Fargo's Famous Five Spot. Another watering hole remembered well but also gone now was the Silver Tray.

 

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Liquor was an issue in Fargo from its very beginning. The residents of Fargo on the Prairie took exception to the rougher residents of Fargo in the Brush and had the encampment in the woods raided and closed in February 1871 by the authorities on the pretext of the residents selling liquor on an Indian reservation. Saloons soon thrived, however, in the newly founded city of Fargo.

Fargo, North Dakota

Saloons

The 1883 Fargo City Directory lists 12 saloons in Fargo: