How did saloons in the Old West get their liquor delivered?

September 22, 2009 1:19 PM

How did saloons in tiny towns in the Old West get liquor delivered?

I'm watching Silverado (pretty good flick btw) and wondering how small town saloons in the old west managed to keep their liquor in stock.
If it's true (and it may not be) that getting goods from point A to point B without your wagon train getting robbed was such an issue, and if it's also true that there wasn't much for a man to do in these towns BUT drink then it seems to me like you'd run out of stuff like crazy.

Did they keep huge storehouses of the stuff?
Weekly wagon deliveries?
Were there regional liquor distributors running well-secured freight operations?

My curiosity has been piqued.

Btw you should check this movie out if you like westerns, Costner notwithstanding.

posted by Senor Cardgage to Society & Culture (11 answers total)

supplies typically came by train
posted by Eicats at 1:26 PM on September 22, 2009

I imagine it was shipped out by rail and then delivered on wagons from the rail depot to the town. And of course, I'm sure a lot of people made their own back then. Much cheaper and there was no shortage of grain.
posted by balls at 1:26 PM on September 22, 2009

by train I mean the steam locomotive kind
posted by Eicats at 1:27 PM on September 22, 2009

All towns had a freight company. Remember Wells Fargo. They had guards riding shotgun, etc. That is how all their merchandise got delivered until the railroad came through. I liked the movie as well.
posted by JayRwv at 1:27 PM on September 22, 2009

and if it's also true that there wasn't much for a man to do in these towns

In the olden days, there was this stuff called "work." Most people did a lot of it.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:29 PM on September 22, 2009 [12 favorites]

Keep in mind that a lot of this stuff was distilled and brewed locally from local ingredients. Fine bourbon came by train. But you could also buy the local moonshine made from leftover corn, potatoes, barley, etc.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:43 PM on September 22, 2009

Freight. You've watched too many westerns - people ordered things, they were delivered. Deliveries were neither frequent or reliable as today, but things got there.

For an idea of how it worked, have a look at this page about early freight/mail in Kansas. Things were delivered to a railroad terminus, and taken from there to the destination by wagon or coach.
posted by zamboni at 1:45 PM on September 22, 2009

It's not overly difficult to make spirits if there's a financial incentive to do it. Rural people still do it all over the world. My smallish home town was home to a distiller until the place burned in the 1860's (or thereabouts), and there were several in another, larger town up the river (one of which was in operation until Prohibition started.)

If local liquor was available in coastal New England (where transport is easy and grain agriculture is tough), I'm sure it was even more popular in places where grains thrived and transportation of goods was a slog.

Distillers were numerous enough on the late 18th century frontier that they could go to war against the federal government.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:07 PM on September 22, 2009

I think a lot of the homesteaders in this period would be dry due to religious and family reasons (at least, I don't remember Pa Ingalls liking anything other than a good game of checkers, but maybe that was a euphemism). I suppose that depends on where the settlers were coming from.

The stereotypical saloon patrons would be miners, railroaders, or cowboys. All three would get liquored up the same way they got other necessary supplies - by freight.
posted by muddgirl at 2:08 PM on September 22, 2009

By train. Crime wasn't nearly as bad as the movies portray, except for trains and wagons carrying money - those were very often targeted bc of the ease of galloping off with paper money. Bottles of liquor? Not so easy.
posted by Neekee at 6:55 PM on September 22, 2009

You've watched too many Westerns -- especially the minimalist, deserted-town Westerns by the likes of Leone. (Though you must watch Once Upon a Time in the West, his apotheosis. It is at once more realistic and more fantastic than any other Western.)

The Old West, with little or no government, was a generally peaceful place, not the violent frontier often depicted. There were probably fewer than a dozen bank robberies in the entire period from 1859 through 1900 in all the frontier West....

In the real Dodge City of history, there were five killings in 1878, the most homicidal year in the little town's frontier history. In the most violent year in Deadwood, South Dakota, only four people were killed.

Sure, there were murders and robberies. But they weren't quite as depicted in the movies. Near my town, in 1859, there was a notorious murder that became the last lynching in Wisconsin. Think of the smaller population and how quickly news travels in a small town and you'll have an idea of what the environment was like for a criminal.

Then think of how difficult it would be to fence (let alone transport) a case full of liquor. It's just not the easiest thing to steal in bulk on a regular basis.

Really, as zamboni says, there were tremendous amounts of commerce -- in part just because of the need to ship hay around to feed horses, which were used for everything in those days. Liquor was just one of thousands of commodity items shipped to the remotest places. It wasn't even one of the more valuable ones.
posted by dhartung at 9:15 PM on September 22, 2009 [1 favorite]