Booze, bullets and Prohibition in the Big Horn Basin Part 1: Floorboards stained with blood

On a hot June evening in 1923, George Sherrin and A. E. Carey of Greybull stopped near a hidden cache of liquor in the bed of Cottonwood Creek north of Cody. The cache reportedly contained about 40 gallons of liquor.

The two men had been watched by locally deputized Prohibition officers Harry Tipton, a Park County Probation agent, and J. T. McGonagle, the courthouse janitor. Acting on a tip, the officers had been taken to the site armed with high-powered rifles and instructed to arrest the owners if they appeared.

When the Nash automobile stopped near the cache and then started toward Cody, the officers stepped from their hiding place and ordered the men to halt and “stick ’em up.” Carey, who was driving, accelerated instead. From about 50 feet away, the officers opened fire. The Cody Enterprise reported that 16 shots struck the Nash.

Carey was hit in the thigh. As he struggled with the wound, Sherrin moved to take the wheel, but a second bullet struck him through the heart, killing him instantly. Carey, badly injured, nevertheless drove the 60 miles back to Greybull with his friend’s body on the floor of the car. The Enterprise reported that he reached home nearly faint from blood loss. Sheriff Loomis and Deputy Earl Pulley then went to Greybull, where they found Carey and the bullet-riddled car, its floorboards stained with the blood of both men.

The shooting became one of the Basin’s sharpest Prohibition flashpoints. The issue was not simply whether Sherrin and Carey had broken the law. It was whether enforcing that law justified firing rifles into a fleeing car when the officers knew who the men were and where they lived.

Was it worth killing a man to seize several containers of illegal liquor? Did Prohibition make the Big Horn Basin safer, or did it place more power, and more danger, in the hands of officers enforcing a law many people resented? Those questions would follow Wyoming’s dry years long after the shooting at Cottonwood Creek.

PROHIBITION: HOW IT BEGAN

By the early 20th century, alcohol abuse had become a serious and divisive issue in America. Heavy drinking was blamed for poverty, domestic violence, workplace accidents and families losing badly needed income.

Women became a powerful force in the temperance movement, particularly because they often had little legal or financial protection when a husband’s drinking devastated the household. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union pushed for restrictions on alcohol, while the Anti-Saloon League used its growing political influence to close saloons and restrict the liquor trade.

When America entered World War I in 1917, patriotism added momentum to the cause. With soldiers overseas and food needed at home and in Europe, Prohibitionists argued that grain belonged on dinner tables, not in beer and whiskey. Anti-German sentiment also weakened the heavily German-American brewing industry.

Women’s suffrage and Prohibition became closely connected, as well. Many temperance advocates believed women needed the ballot if they hoped to close the saloons. Wyoming was different from most states. Women had already been voting for nearly half a century when Prohibition appeared on the ballot in 1918.

THE FIGHT TO KEEP AMERICA WET

But the issue was far from settled. As Wyoming voters headed to the polls that November, they faced a fundamental question: Were alcohol’s social costs serious enough to justify banning it altogether?

Opponents, commonly called “wets,” said no. Brewers, farmers, saloon owners, restaurant operators and thousands of workers connected to the liquor industry feared the loss of businesses and jobs. Others argued that the government had no right to tell adults what they could drink and warned that such a sweeping ban would be nearly impossible to enforce.

Prohibition had become more than a fight over alcohol. It was also a debate over personal freedom, the role of government and what American society should look like.

NOVEMBER 5, 1918, VOTE

Finally, after years of debate, Wyoming placed the question before its voters. As American troops were fighting and dying in Europe during the closing days of World War I, Wyoming residents went to the polls on November 5, 1918, and overwhelmingly approved statewide Prohibition by a vote of more than two to one.

It is difficult to imagine today. This was a deeply independent state where cattle and sheep ranchers still competed fiercely for the range, and more than 100 one-room schoolhouses dotted the prairies. Yet Wyoming voters chose to limit the sale of alcohol, setting the state on a course that would soon reach every community in the Big Horn Basin.

Why the vote was so overwhelming remains debated today. Some blamed Mormon voters, while others pointed out that thousands of Wyoming soldiers stationed overseas could not vote. Still others believed fear of contracting influenza kept voters home. Even the weather drew blame, as early November winds brought snow and cold temperatures to much of the state.

No matter the reason, the message was clear: Fill your cellars and basements with all the liquor you can. The long-range forecast for alcohol sales in Wyoming was going to be dry.

A YEAR TO REMEMBER

Six days after Wyoming’s historic vote, the guns finally fell silent in Europe. World War I ended with the Armistice of November 11, bringing relief and celebration to communities across the state. But the relief was short-lived. That fall and winter, Wyoming endured the deadly influenza epidemic, which killed more than 1,000 residents.

By the following summer, the people of the Big Horn Basin appeared to be emerging from a remarkable period of upheaval. The war was over, the influenza epidemic seemed to be loosening its grip, spring moisture had been welcome, crops stood in the fields and the days had grown hot. Yet even as life began to feel more settled, another major change was on the way.

WYOMING WENT DRY

At midnight on July 1, 1919, as irrigation water flowed across fields and pastures from Frannie to Thermopolis, the Big Horn Basin went dry in a very different way. Wyoming’s new Prohibition law took effect, ending the legal liquor trade.

The change reached nearly every corner of the Big Horn Basin. Bars in Cody could no longer legally pour a drink. Saloons and other businesses that sold liquor in Thermopolis, Worland, Basin, Greybull and Lovell faced the loss of a major part of their trade. Ranchers from Ten Sleep to Shell could no longer stop in town and legally buy a bottle of whiskey to take back to the ranch.

Hotels, restaurants, clubs and druggists suddenly had to determine exactly what the new law allowed them to sell. Even priests and pastors had to consider how Prohibition would affect sacramental wine and other religious practices.

And there were plenty of unanswered questions. What exactly was “intoxicating liquor?” Did Prohibition mean whiskey and other hard liquor, or beer and wine as well? Could people keep alcohol they already owned? Could they make something at home for their own use? What about alcohol prescribed as medicine? And perhaps most importantly in a region of scattered ranches, isolated roads and communities separated by miles of open country: Who was going to enforce the new law?

Over the next few weeks, we’ll explore the uniquely Big Horn Basin ways people obeyed, ignored, fought and openly defied Prohibition, sometimes with humor and sometimes with deadly seriousness. There would be moonshiners, hidden stills, raids, arrests, courtroom battles and even bloodshed. Looking back more than a century later, many of the stories seem remarkably fitting for the independent and diverse people who called the Basin home.

Next week, we’ll see what happened when Wyoming went dry, but plenty of Big Horn Basin residents decided they were still thirsty.