Iron On The Ice

Moorhead became the primary distribution center for "original package" liquor running into dry North Dakota. "Blind pig" operators in Cass County sent wagons, riverboats, and couriers over the border nightly to smuggle jugs and barrels into Fargo backrooms. When the Red River froze two feet thick between Moorhead and Fargo, the physical border evaporated. Official bridges like the Northern Pacific rail bridge or Front Street were watched by Cass County deputies and city marshals. Smugglers ran horse-drawn cutters and low sleds muffled with burlap across the jagged river ice at midnight, delivering five-gallon demijohns directly up the snowy coulees into back-alley basement trapdoors.