The temperance movement in Boise Valley was bolstered on Feb. 18, 1868, by the formation in Boise of a grand lodge of the Independent Order of Good Templars.
Churches in the Valley, particularly the Methodists, had preached total abstinence from liquor from the time they were established in Idaho. Addiction to alcohol was widely recognized as a social evil that destroyed families, created poverty and misery, and often led to violence and crime. The Good Templars was a temperance lodge originally formed near Utica, N.Y., in 1852. It spread rapidly across the country, and soon had chapters all over the world.
Boise's Good Templars had enough money in 1869 to build a large hall on Main Street. New members were actively recruited and branch chapters were organized. One of the first was the Green Meadow lodge, formed in 1872. In August the Statesman described its 43 members as coming from "a farming neighborhood," and that their numbers were growing. The name was taken from Samuel D. Aiken's Green Meadows ranch. Noted lecturers on temperance spoke at chapter meetings, with varying degrees of success.
Although most were praised in the paper, a Major George A. Hilton who lectured on temperance in 1889 was blasted: "We have saloon keepers in Boise at whose feet this lecturer might sit and take lessons in brotherly love and humane regard, aye, and in tender respect for the truth. We think the coming of this man to Boise has been most unfortunate for the cause of temperance."
This was from an editor who favored that cause. The local chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union countered with a paid ad that commended Hilton as "a power for good in the work of the W.C.T.U., and would rejoice to hear of his work in every town in Idaho."
The organization had a chapter in Eagle that was active as late as the 1940s. Their meetings in Eagle were usually held in the Methodist and Baptist churches. Today there are no active chapters left in the Valley.
In 1909, the people of Ada County had the chance to vote in a local option election on whether to prohibit the sale or use of alcoholic beverages. The vote was 4,498 to 3,715 against Prohibition, but a majority of the people in Eagle and nearby rural precincts voted for it. They rejected the arguments of men from Boise who spoke to a large crowd in Eagle's Odd Fellows hall on Sept. 2, 1909. The speakers represented the Boise Business Men's Association, a group that was sure the enactment of prohibition would be bad for business.
Bob Robinson, "the Alaskan Poet" told his audience that he had been a temperance worker for a dozen years, but now believed that social evils could not be eliminated by legislation. "The business of government," he said, "is to serve and protect, not to master the individual, and to secure to every unit of its society those material conditions of freedom where they may enjoy at liberty a complete, happy, wholesome, free and full human life."
A second speaker quoted Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln on the individual right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that included the right to use liquor.
On the eve of the special election, Moses Alexander, a Democrat and former mayor of Boise, and Gov. James Brady, a Republican, spoke in favor of Prohibition. The Idaho Statesman editorialized against it, fearing that it would be bad for Boise business.
"If Boise goes dry today, Nampa and Caldwell will celebrate they want a dry Boise."
Ada County voters rejected Prohibition again in 1912, by an even closer margin than in 1909. In 1916 voters ratified an amendment to the Idaho constitution making Prohibition official. By that time, 16 other states also had gone dry and Moses Alexander, who had supported Prohibition in 1909, was governor.
Few of those who supported national Prohibition in 1919, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by the states, could have foreseen the difficulty of enforcing a ban on what many members of society considered a right, especially if it was part of their heritage. Idaho's French, Basque and Italian immigrant families, for example, considered drinking wine with meals and on festive occasions a part of their culture. Many of them raised grapes and made their own wine, as they had for generations.
After passage of the Volstead Act in 1920, it became the responsibility of federal law agencies to help local officers enforce the ban on liquor. Prohibition created a whole new criminal class: moonshiners, who made illegal and often dangerous booze, bootleggers who distributed it and rumrunners who imported liquor from Canada and other foreign countries.
Violations and arrests began in Ada County almost immediately after Idaho's Prohibition laws went into effect in 1916. By the 1920s, enforcement had become a major problem. The illegal manufacture of moonshine had become so profitable that stills were set up and running all over the Valley. In 1923, a federal grand jury indicted the Ada County sheriff, one of his deputies, Boise's police chief, the managers of three rooming houses (probably brothels), a rancher, and a prominent local doctor, for conspiring to produce and distribute moonshine.
The police chief was acquitted, but the rest were convicted. The evidence introduced against them included the confiscated still itself, other alcohol-making apparatus and several barrels of moonshine whisky.
The young town of Eagle, unlike most towns in Idaho, never had a saloon before statewide Prohibition went into effect in 1916, and could not have had one thereafter until the repeal of national Prohibition in 1933. Even Orville Jackson, proprietor of the Eagle drug and general store, got a license to sell beer, but not to serve it.
That year a tavern called the Bank Club, licensed to serve 3.2 percent beer, opened in the former home of the Bank of Eagle. The bank had closed its doors on Aug. 31, 1932, one of 39 state-chartered banks that suspended operation between 1929 and 1933. The well-managed Eagle bank did far better than most, and was one of only five in the state to cash out its depositors at 100 percent, a total of $97,876.21.
Some Idaho banks returned less than 25 cents on the dollar when they failed. The First National Bank of Idaho, in continuous operation since 1867, also closed its doors on Aug. 31, 1932, although it and others were able to reopen after newly-elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed a national "bank holiday" on March 5, 1933. The respite allowed the Treasury Department to examine the books of troubled banks and to determine their soundness and ability to continue. The Bank of Eagle, however, like many small Idaho banks of the time, was closed forever.
After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, taverns opened in newly vacant bank buildings in small towns all over Idaho. Eagle's Bank Club was operated by Herman Southard until 1943 when he took in Lee Anderson as partner.
Ron Marshall remembers that "Ivan Pollard was the operator of the bar for at least five years staring about 1940. He was very involved in racing horses and was well-known as a horse trader. In addition to being a beer bar, the Bank Club had a very well equipped kitchen, served breakfast, the best hamburgers in town, and some delicacies. Thelma Cullen Taylor and her brother Roy caught bullfrogs in the Boise River and sold frog legs to the Bank Club owner for 65 cents a pair.
"In those years George Robbins was the night watchman, paid by local merchants. Every night he cruised around town in his gray Jeep station wagon, checked the doors to be sure they were locked, and looked for any other problems. When George was not in his Jeep you would find him in the Bank Club practicing and improving his pool game. He welcomed the local young men who would join him in playing pool in the middle of the night. He taught a lot of Eagle boys how to shoot pool, do trick shots and bank shots. He was easily the best pool player in town and nobody could beat him.
"The Bank Club was a place where locals could stop in and have a beer. They also could get involved in some very high-stakes poker games. There were two or three reports of entire farms being won or lost in the card games at the Club in the 1930s. During the winter months some of those farmers who didn't have daily chores with dairy cows often had too much time on their hands and spent a lot of idle time there.
"Claude Evans was a town personality and local bachelor who owned a large farm where Eagle Middle School is now. The farm provided him with enough rental income to allow him to almost live at the Bank Club for about 20 years until he died at 75. Claude ate his meals and drank beer there all day, then he would drive home. Next day he was back before noon and started his routine all over again. The worst thing about Claude was that he only put on a new work shirt and a change of bib overalls once or twice a year. He also wore rubber irrigation boots all of the time. Earl DeChambeau would get tired of Claude's appearance and odor, and provide him with a new outfit. Nobody knew if he ever took a bath."
From 1945 until 1968 Ralph Wilson and his wife, Edith, owned the business, until it was sold to Louis and Celia Lessley. A 1974 Eagle City Council promotional publication described it as a "beer parlor."
In 1975, a Statesman reporter wrote: "Three features of life frequently considered indispensable for any community are absent in Eagle: a police department, a chamber of commerce, and a bar where liquor can be bought by the drink." The Lessleys renamed the business "Bank Club and Bar."
Now, the city's golf courses and several of its restaurants have liquor licenses. Roberta "Birdie" Karpach owned the club from 1984 until 1997 when she sold it to Larry and Jennifer Schwartz, who opened an Italian restaurant there called DaVinci's. Roberta applied for and received Eagle's first liquor license as soon as the city qualified to have one.
She remembers that she could not have kept the club running without "a great old cowboy" named Fred Robinson, who was bartender, short-order cook, and bouncer all in one. He opened the place every morning and would come down at a moment's notice if some tough customers came in who made Roberta feel uneasy. On one occasion, she recalls, Fred grabbed two unruly patrons and threw them out in the street. The bar section of DaVinci's is the original banking room, where the big steel Bank of Eagle vault is a unique feature.
Judy Mendiola remembered the Bank Club as a regular meeting place on Saturday nights for couples that gathered to play a card game called pitch.
"You never asked if anybody was going, because there were always people in there that you could play cards with."
Arthur Hart writes this column on Idaho history for the Idaho Statesman. It appears each Tuesday in the Life section. Reach him by e-mail at life@idahostatesman.com.
