Bootleggers, moonshiners and rum runners

COEUR d’ALENE — Two words in bold, black, capitalized letters greet guests coming to The Museum of North Idaho’s new exhibit: “SALOON CLOSED.”

Below that, on a sign, it says “Due to national prohibition. Enter at your own risk.”

Despite the warning, people keep pushing open the swinging doors and venturing in.

That’s the lure of liquor.

“I'm drawn to more of the kind of darker histories,” said Britt Thurman, museum director, who selected the exhibit. “I like the lawbreakers and the people kind of on the edge of society.

"They weren't necessarily lawbreakers, but just people trying to survive," she said.

“The Rum Rebellion: Prohibition in North Idaho,” is on display at the museum through Oct. 29.

From 1920 to 1933, the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcohol was illegal across the country.

Kootenai County went dry in 1909, voted to go wet again in 1911, voted to go dry again in 1914 and then the entire state went dry in 1915.

Idaho finally repealed prohibition in 1935.

But in North Idaho’s towns, some figured out ways to keep the booze flowing all the time.

Shoshone County, particularly Wallace, were known for ignoring liquor laws.

“You had all of these different bootleggers and moonshiners and rum runners that were going into Montana or Canada or wherever, to be able to bring liquor to communities that were dry,” Thurman said. “So they were dry, but not at all dry.”

The exhibit includes tales of how resourceful people developed ways to make and sell liquor without getting caught, and how law enforcement caught up with them anyway, and kept them literally in shackles nailed to boots in the Kootenai County jail in 1926.

It shows a clip of an evangelist, Billy Sunday, delivering a hell-fire sermon about the “evils of alcohol.”

Visitors can put on headphones and listen to an actual 1933 newsreel talking about the celebration of prohibition ending.

There are many artifacts, including a still, bottles, and the .38 Colt revolver that belonged to Mike Roche, Coeur d’Alene police chief the last four years of prohibition.

All sorts of methods were devised to get booze into the right, or wrong, hands.

Another story tells how people would visit the post office, ask for a $5 stamp, slide over the bill and receive a bottle of whiskey.

There’s an interactive display, "What do you think happened to W.A. Rutherford?” for visitors to read about a death during prohibition, and pen their opinion on whether it was murder or an accident.

“This gentleman kind of got caught up in this bootlegging ring and at the end of it, he's dead. And you have just these different accounts of what actually happened,” Thurman said.

Patricia Nedialkova of the Bay Area toured The Rum Rebellion on Tuesday and liked it.

“I think the shackles were the oddest thing,” she said. “You could just unlace the boots and take them off.”

Thurman said while prohibition was usually touted as a success and greatly reduced drinking, it wasn’t. Jails were often filled to the brim, and it was mostly with prohibition violators.

“In actuality, it was a complete failure,” Thurman said.

Thurman believes The Rum Rebellion paints a good picture of what life was like during prohibition.

“That's just kind of this iconic period,” she said.

“My viewpoint of that era has completely changed from what I thought it was originally. I’m always learning and finding different perspectives on it.”

The museum is at 115 Northwest Blvd. Daily hours are 11 to 5.