Line stores were booze bastions

Prohibition lasted longer in Maine than in any other state because residents passed their own first-in-the-nation law in 1851. During this extended liquor drought, Mainers became adept at finding clever ways to ban booze and drink it, too, in order to maintain the appearance of high moral standards while imbibing.

One gimmick was the “line store.” A series of these rustic taverns straddled the Maine-Canadian border, making it even more difficult than it already was for lawmen to do their jobs. The Boston Sunday Globe became so interested in this novel marketing approach that it sent a reporter and a cameraman to Aroostook County a century ago for the entertainment of proper Bostonians.

The reporter arrived in Houlton, where he hired a team and driver to go out the “military road” to Dewdrop Hollow, a border booze bastion where two of these line stores were located.

“No road in Maine is traveled by such hosts of the thirsty as this stretch from Houlton to the line. It’s worn down to the bedrock in places by the wagon wheels and the shoetaps of the pilgrims,” he wrote.

But first, the horses turned off on a rutted logging road and drove a half-mile into the deep woods to visit the establishment of Jacob Wise, a young entrepreneur who ran a line store in a tar paper shack.

The precise description of this establishment published in the Boston Sunday Globe on Dec. 4, 1904, is worth reprinting in full.

“The house stands squarely on the boundary, facing west, the line passing through its center. One therefore enters in Maine. A partition is built across the building exactly on the international boundary. The room on the Maine side is perhaps 10 feet square, rough, unfurnished and dirt.

“Along its north side is another partition, dividing off a corner of the building as a bedroom, from which, through two small windows, a view of the road can be obtained. A face appears at each window when a stranger drives up.

“From the room first entered a door in the partition opens into a back room. This is in Canada and on entering it the visitor crosses the international boundary.

“The room, perhaps 8 by 10, is also rough and unfurnished. On the left is the bar, running east and west, at right angles with the boundary, which it touches at the west end. A casual look at this bar might lead the visitor to believe he was looking at a prison cell, for iron rods extend from the counter to the ceiling, forming a complete barrier between the space behind the bar and the room in front.

“The iron rods are about half an inch thick and are placed six inches apart, sufficiently wide for a bottle to be thrust out between the rods. Although all customers enter from Maine, no liquor is sold on American soil. This fact keeps off the deputy sheriff and the internal revenue officer,” wrote the Globe reporter.

Carleton County, the New Brunswick jurisdiction across the border, however, was, in fact, dry. The cleverly constructed shanty was designed to get around this small obstacle.

“If the authorities of Carleton County enter to seize liquor … they are obliged to come in from the Maine side. By the time they could succeed in battering down the defenses over the bar any possible stock of liquor might be removed into the little bedroom at the end of the bar, on the Maine side.”

Of course, by acting together, the authorities from both sides of the border could be victorious, but in the months the place had been in existence this had never occurred.

After visiting Dewdrop Hollow, where the main road crossed the border, and seeing a similar set up at one of the two establishments there, the reporter returned to Houlton and took the train to Bridgewater where three more line stores did business. Holman McMullins’ place had become particularly well known for his ingenious attempt to evade the law.

McMullins’ salesroom was half on one side and half on the other side of the border. He kept his stock of liquor hung on the wall perpendicular to the boundary line in a rack mounted on large rollers like those used on stable doors. The idea was that the whole contraption could be rolled from one country to the other in seconds in the event of a raid.

In fact, McMullins had been raided and fined. Apparently the rolling rack had not worked well and by the time the Globe reporter arrived it had been disassembled.

The line stores continued north, two in Littleton, one in Monticello, one in Mars Hill, two in Fort Fairfield, two in Limestone, and one each in Easton and Hamlin.

The upper part of the line between Mars Hill and Hamlin bordered on Victoria County, which was wet. This meant the line stores there could sell to Americans from the Canadian side under certain legal restrictions.

Further along, the line entered the St. John River. Many Americans crossed the river on ferries, purchasing liquor and returning to Maine without paying a duty.

A century ago, the battle over the Maine Law, as it had come to be known, was as hot as the day it was passed in 1851, and many people didn’t appreciate the existence of the line stores. One of them was Charles Dunn, a county commissioner who authored a petition that was being circulated in Houlton asking the federal government to close the stores.

“Those stores spread poverty and crime,” Dunn told the Globe reporter. “They sell to poor drunkards, who squander their last cent, and then come as a charge on the county. It costs the county from $10 to $15 each to arrest these men, bring them in and commit them. We find them all along the road, many in cold weather, with hands or feet frozen. These three stores at the Houlton border have cost this county $5,000 in the last few years. We have from 40 to 60 drunks in the jail all the time, when the average shouldn’t be more than 15.”

But the Globe’s man had seen enough to figure out that the Maine Law was a real mess and it would be a long time before it was enforced, if ever.

He concluded his report: “Yet the gentlemanly merchants of the border smile genially on the temperance workers, as well as on the local liquor deputies, the revenue officers of Uncle Sam, and all other representatives of the law, and ask them the famous old question, ‘What are you going to do about it.'”

In fact, a few months later Dunn got his way, engineering a raid on the three Houlton line stores by law enforcement officers from both sides of the border. They netted a large cache of liquor. The fine, however, was only $50 each, although Jacob Wise faced a possible indictment for smuggling American beer into Canada, according to a story on June 2, 1905 in the Bangor Daily News.

Wayne E. Reilly has edited two books of Civil War era diaries and letters including “The Diaries of Sarah Jane and Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War.” He can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.