Moorhead
(continued)
As World War I loomed on the international horizon, a brief period of
economic growth and optimism followed in Moorhead, according to Clarence Glasrud, a
regional historian and former professor at MSU.
Food shortages vexed the European allies and created a huge export market for area wheat.
Prices rose to $3 a bushel for 1918's bumper crop of wheat. Land suddenly sold for $200 an
acre, Glasrud says.
Meanwhile, Moorhead began to establish itself as a business and service center.
Bars such as the Rathskeller, at left, drew people from across the border in North Dakota,
where drinking alcohol was prohibited. Clay County Historical Society archives
The '20s may have roared on other fronts, but the farm prosperity didn't last long. By
1922, the regional farm economy fell into a deep depression.
"Prices dropped disastrously after the war," Glasrud says. "Down to 26
cents for wheat. Six cents for oats."
Main Street couldn't help but feel the farm crisis. One boon to farm and city came in
1924, when the Fairmont Creamery opened. It was the city's first major industry, employing
180 people and pumping $2 million into the local economy.
"Selling eggs and cream kept many farmers going," Glasrud says.
The crash and burn
The stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s brought Moorhead's
development to a standstill. Both banks closed for a time. People lost their savings and
their jobs. Money was scarce.
It was during this time that a tremendous act of leadership helped secure Moorhead's
future.
On Feb. 10, 1930, fire tore through the buildings of Moorhead Normal School (which
eventually would become MSU), leaving only the auditorium and two dormitories standing.
Along with Concordia College, Moorhead Normal was one of the vital economic and cultural
anchors of the city. So some lawmakers suggested the school be closed - or moved to
another city - instead of rebuilt, city leaders undertook a massive lobbying effort in the
Legislature.
During the next session, lawmakers put up $765,000, a tremendous amount of money
considering the times, to rebuild the school.
Postwar boom
As World War II and the austerity it imposed ebbed away, Moorhead enjoyed the most
significant building and population boom of its history.
People came home from the war to start new lives. They had a renewed sense of optimism,
some money in their pockets and a pent-up will to spend, and no place to live.
"All these young couples needed homes," says Shoptaugh. "Now is when you
start to see houses shooting up everywhere."
From 1946 to 1950, the city's population grew 57 percent, from 9,491 to 14,870.
The pace of growth was less frenzied in the 1950s but was remarkable nonetheless.
Population grew by 56 percent in that decade, from 14,870 residents to 22,934.
Old town falling down
By the early 1960s, Moorhead's leaders faced the city's most difficult and controversial
decision since the abolition of the liquor trade.
The downtown, which was more suited to the turn of the century, had become outmoded. Many
of its brick-faced storefronts were rundown. Parking was a nightmare.
It was the dawn of the shopping mall, and the retail vortex was shifting away from
downtown in favor of shopping centers thriving on Highway 75 south.
"Downtown was obsolete," says Ray Stordahl, who was Moorhead's mayor at the
time. "The question was 'How are you going to transform this 1890s, picturesque,
declining downtown?
"After a lot of discussion we decided the only thing we could do was tear the whole
damn thing down and start over."
Backed by a truckload of federal money, the city bought the entire downtown, 96.7 acres of
businesses and homes, and bulldozed the whole works.
Moorhead's urban renewal was underway, but there were snags. The city was unable to
attract a big-time urban developer to plan and oversee downtown's rebirth.
"It was clear we were going to have to bootstrap this ourselves," Stordahl
recalls.
And that took far more time than anyone expected. In fact, it took years, providing a lot
of time for people to second-guess the decision.
"This was agony for the city (leaders). Enthusiasm wanes when progress slows
down," Stordahl recounts.
(continued)
Some of the local taverns featured polished bar rails and elegantly tiled floors. Others were nothing more than shacks. Clay County Historical Society archives
The rougher saloons were little more than tarpaper shacks nestled closer to the river, places where gamblers, itinerant railroad workers, lumberjacks and rounders with names like "Blinky Jack" could drink, carouse and fight.
Be it the black-tie crowd or the black-eye crowd, they all flocked to Moorhead for the same thing.
"People could come over and drink beer and drink booze and whatever you wanted," Moorhead resident and businessman Jake Kiefer explained during a 1986 interview recorded for the Heritage Education Commission.
"You had half a million people over there and they all wanted whiskey. Had to have whiskey. Couldn't live over there without it."
The son of a local saloon owner and wholesale liquor dealer, Kiefer grew up during Moorhead's boozy era. Granted when he was 89 years old, Kiefer's interview is perhaps the best contemporary record of that time.
In it he recounts how thousands of lumberjacks working the forests of northwest Minnesota would pour into the tiny city after a long and lonely logging season.
He knew lots of them personally. They had names like Big Swede, French Eagle, Big Tom and Short Swede.
"They were good men, but they just lived for one thing. Go out and work six months up in the woods, come into town here, maybe have $500 in their pocket," Kiefer recounted.
"First place they would hit would be down at the Palace (Palace Clothing), buy a new suit of clothes, new underwear, new shirt, tie, fancy hat, the whole damn works."
Next, they'd head to the jeweler to buy a new watch and chain. Then it was off to the barbershops to have their hair cut, beards shaved off, and to soak off the stink of a season in the timber in the steaming bathtubs that lined the back room of most barbershops.
The whole spending spree maybe cost the lumberjacks $50. They'd entrust the rest of their money to Kiefer's father for safe keeping.
"They'd take maybe $50 or $100 and they'd go out and get drunk. They did all their drinking in Moorhead," he said.
And when they were well plied with liquor, the men hopped aboard one of the fleet of free carriages known as "jag wagons" that would transport them to one of Fargo's many brothels or "fancy houses" as Kiefer called them.
"Third Street in Fargo ... They had all the fancy houses there. Madame Deneaux, Madame Massey ... Madame Belle's."
No strangers to this season of drunken men and fat wallets, the prostitutes knew the lumberjacks were ripe for the picking. They harvested as much of their libidinous patrons' cash and finery as possible.
And as they ambled broke and dazed back through the doors of Moorhead's saloons to ease their hangovers - commonly called tin-cup jags because whiskey was served in tin cups - the lumberjacks learned the hard way that if virtue was its own reward, then vice was its own punishment.
"Next morning they'd show up and be pretty sick," Kiefer said. "(They'd) be short $100 or $150, and maybe forget their hat over there or maybe their shoes, maybe their coats and maybe be short a watch or two."
Kiefer, who grew up to become a prominent automobile dealer in Moorhead, may have witnessed life in the saloons firsthand, but he kept his distance from the houses of ill repute.
"I never got over there. I was too young," he told his interviewer. "I'm sorry I missed it. But anyway, it was quite interesting."
