KSPS is airing a documentary that should be of interest to readers of this blog:
Rumrunners' Paradise: Spokane During Prohibition, which airs at 7 p.m. tonight. Unlike the east coast and midwest, where the bootlegging business was dominated by already-established organized crime networks, the inland Northwest liquor trade was more of an amateur hour. Bootlegging in the Inland Empire was shaped by our peculiar history and geography and involved unemployed timber men, Indians whose reservations were handily located between Spokane and the Canadian border, and not a few enterprising women and children. This HistoryLink article,
"Prohibition: Booze Routes to Spokane" outlines the business. Edmund Fahey's
Rum Road to Spokane is a wonderfully entertaining first-hand narrative from a rum runner.
Rumrunners' Paradise features historians Dale Soden, Bill Stimson, William Rorabaugh, Jim Kershner, Jim Price, and Tony Bamonte. An all-star lineup!
Here is a good Spokesman-Review story on the documentary.
